Ooh! I have a mockingbird in my yard that I can try this on! I counted 20 different songs the other night, and it was probably a lot more, I just stopped being able to distinguish. They can have a repertoire of over 200! I was actually wondering if something like this project existed, or maybe just an app really, but then hadn't thought about it since (I'm just an insomniac, not a bird watcher). Very cool.
If you don't know about the North American mockingbird, they fly up to a high perch at night and claim a yard sized area of territory by reciting all the songs it knows, as loud as it can. Over and over again, until it is exhausted. The little psychos. Thus impressing all the lady mockingbirds in the area. Apparently they do a little dance as well, but given it's usually the middle of the night when this happens, I haven't seen it.
They used to drive me nuts until I read up on them. Now I try to count how many songs they know.
Merlin is the most widely-used audio recognition app. It's amazing, try it out. BirdNET is another project (also affiliated with Cornell) that works in a similar way. This project is about locally installing BirdNET.
For me, the app version is able to detect mockingbirds (and the similar mimicking Brown Thrasher) as themselves most of the time. I'm honestly impressed it can do it at all for their songs on small samples.
If you don't know about the North American mockingbird, they fly up to a high perch at night and claim a yard sized area of territory by reciting all the songs it knows, as loud as it can. Over and over again, until it is exhausted. The little psychos. Thus impressing all the lady mockingbirds in the area. Apparently they do a little dance as well, but given it's usually the middle of the night when this happens, I haven't seen it.
They used to drive me nuts until I read up on them. Now I try to count how many songs they know.