Pl@ntnet

Dear Readers, having been an  app sceptic for the longest time, I am gradually beginning to accept that they have their uses – the three I’m going to recommend here are all free, and all give at least a place to start when trying to identify a plant or bird. I use the apps when I’m out in the field (or park or walking along the street) – I don’t know about you, but if I see something interesting I’m most unlikely to have my field guides to hand. So, I use an app – sometimes the results agree with what I’m already thinking, sometimes  I go home and double-check with my books.

First up is Pl@ntnet, with the home screen pictured above. You can either take a photo with the app itself, or ask it to id a photo you’ve already taken. What I like about this app is that it gives  you a percentage certainty for the plant’s ID, and it is crowdsourced, so people can validate or argue with other people’s identification. In this it’s very similar to iNaturalist, but you get an instant idea of what  the plant is likely to be, rather than having to wait to see if your identification is accurate or not (though I greatly admire the whole citizen science aspect of the app).

For birds, I was a long-time fan of BirdNET, designed by the Cornell Bioacoustics Laboratory. You hear a particular call, record it, highlight the area that contains the call of interest, and the app will try to identify it. If someone is talking at the same time, it will tell you that it’s ‘human – probably’, which is amusing, at least in the short  term.

BirdNET recording

However, I recently downloaded Merlin, which works in a different way – you download it and it ‘listens’ for birds, before giving you a list of what it’s ‘heard’ – I shared an example of what it found during my walk in Golders Green Crematorium yesterday, and apart from being a little uncertain about the Kingfisher I’m very happy with the rest of the birds that it found. So maybe the Kingfisher was accurate! I shall have to go back and see if I can find one.

Merlin list for yesterday

So, with BirdNET you need to be listening yourself, hear something unusual and record it, whereas Merlin does all the listening for you. Personally, I’m keeping both.

You have to be careful with apps, though – I’m not a great fan of Google Lens. I find it is inaccurate more times than it’s accurate. I haven’t yet found an app that helps with insects and other invertebrates, or fungi, but in these cases I would go with iNaturalist – the final id might take longer, but it would have been checked by an actual human being with specialised knowledge. And I greatly value the expertise on some of the specialist Facebook pages, especially on plants and invertebrates. Plus, old-school as I am, you can’t beat a really good Field Guide, though the advantage of apps is that if you have absolutely no idea where to start to look in a book, they sometimes (not always) point you in the right direction. What we really need are more taxonomists, more people who have learned the nuances of identification, and are prepared to teach others. Correct identification matters more than ever in these times of rapid change – if we don’t know what’s in an area, how will we know what’s happening over time?