I’ve gotten into birding about 2022-2023 time frame. I found an app called Merlin Bird ID that allowed anyone with a smartphone to listen to birds and the app will identify the birds based on their spectrogram patterns.
I try to keep a bird feeder full for the local backyard birds and always wanted to try to identify the birds in the neighborhood even when I’m not there. I looked around for something like Bird ID that can run 24/7 without me being there.
Enter BirdNET-Pi
BirdNET-Pi uses a RasberryPi 5 along with a microphone to record and identify birds 24/7. At the time, I only had a Pi 3B so I had to use the lite version of the OS/Software. The repository is open source and available here.
Version 1
With a High Endurance SD card and a Yeti Snowball microphone, I started the project. I put it outside under an overhang to protect it from the elements and had it listen to all of the feathered friends flying around the area. This project lasted about 1 year before the SQL database corrupted and froze the device. I rescued the data and bought a Pi5 with an NVMe drive so that I can reduce the chances of data corruption.
Version 2
Armed with a new Pi5 with a NVMe drive and using the additional RAM as a cache to further reduce wear on the storage, I restored the backup from the older Pi3B and imported everything onto the new Pi5. I also changed the match sensitivity from 89% to 91% since I felt like I was getting a few too many false positives. I had to shut down this project in the summer of 2026 since I was about to move to a new place.
Results
This data was captured in the South East corner of Rheinland-Pfalz near the edge of the Pfälzerwald . Please note that the data is still considered raw and does not account for nearly impossible birds. I do live in the city so audio anomalies can still happen as there are people, kids, dogs, cats, and other animals walking nearby.
Overview of the data
As you can see, there are two little blips in the data. One around early September 2024 when the pi failed to reboot properly, and another one around May 2025 when the database corrupted.
The left bar chart is the frequency using 15 minutes sampling of the birds near the device. The time chart on the top right shows the activity of the birds during the day. Finally on the bottom, there is a timeline along with activity of the birds. This 2 year project includes 53,025 unique samples that have been analyzed. I’ll go into deeper analysis for the top 10 birds.
The Birds
Eurasian Blackbird (Turdus merula)
This lovely bird will usually perch on top of a tall tree or building in the evenings and seem to sing about it’s day. They are plentiful and numerous through out the city (and continent).
Common Swift (Apus apus)
The shrill screams of these fast flying birds indicate the start of summer. They show up from Africa around mid to late May as the weather gets warmer. In the evenings, they from screaming parties as they talk to each other about their days soaring and diving.
Eurasian Blue Tit (Cyanistes caeruleus)
This wide spread bird always have the very distinctive raspy chatter calls. This bird is the most popular visitor of the seed balls that I put out. Its beautiful blue and yellow plumage is a welcomed sight since they are usually here year round.
Eurasian Magpie (Pica pica)
These dapper black and white birds are in the Corvidae family. They are always seem so mischievous. They love the meal worms that I put out.
European Robin (Erithacus rubecula)
These birds seem to not shy away from humans. They are very small, yet have such a loud and distinct song. They are know as the Christmas bird in Germany.
Great Tit (Parus major)
A neighbor of the blue tit, it has the very distinctive high low high low songs. These also swarm the seed balls.
Redwing (Turdus iliacus)
These ones are a little rarer and I don’t hear these one as much. They’re quite and need a good ear to seek their calls out. Unfortunately, I did not get any good recordings of these birds.
European Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis)
These birds have a very flippy and complex song. They also have bold colors and are mostly active around Spring to Summer.
Common Wood-Pigeon (Columba palumbus)
I usually hear these in the mid morning of warmer days. The coos of this pigeon is reminiscent of the Mourning Doves that I used to wake up to.
Black Redstart (Phoenicurus ochruros)
These little birds have a shrill raspy song that coincides of the start of warmer weather. They also perch on tall trees and roofs to call out to the world.
Top 25 birds
Detail of the time charts
