An innovative project using birdsong to unlock the secrets of wildlife has been launched through a collaboration between the UK Agri-Tech Centre and Chirrup.ai.
Chirrup.ai introduced this groundbreaking technology to simplify and reduce the cost of nature monitoring, providing an affordable solution for measuring and managing biodiversity.
The project, called ‘ChirrupNano’, is funded by Innovate UK and utilizes birdsong to monitor wildlife that is often invisible in nature reserves and backyard bird counts.
The next-generation bio-recorder is slim, self-locating, remotely deployable, and designed and built in the UK. Delivered directly to farms, it can be deployed in various environments, from sunny fields to shaded woodlands, wherever monitoring is needed.
Chirrup’s AI currently recognizes over 100 species from Great Britain and Ireland.
It is already getting major retraining to recognise all the important species that the UK’s pioneering non-governmental organisations have drawn to our attention, thanks to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), The Wildlife Trusts and the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT).
The redesigned website app lets farms compare their species lists to others, to standard benchmarks and even their own past performance.
This empowers them to make more informed decisions about sustainable practices, leading to a richer, healthier ecosystem – such as increased plant diversity, better soil and fewer pests.
Birds are ecological barometers; they’re everywhere, super responsive to change and their presence tells a story about the thriving life in the places they occupy – from insects and plants to clean water and the general quality of the ecosystem.
With farmland covering a huge 71% of the UK, it is the ideal testing ground for the next-generation Chirrup.ai and farmers are being asked to respond to changing government and food company policies on pro-wildlife production.
The ChirrupNano project is about making it easy, fast and affordable. One hundred farmers were invited to a farmland trial to help refine the next-generation Chirrup.ai, and will also contribute to the future of environmental monitoring in the UK.
Hayley Gerry, Project Manager at the UK Agri-Tech Centre, said: “The expanse of knowledge we can gain about biodiversity in an area using the bioacoustics of bird song is extremely impressive.
“To enable sustainable farming, we need to encourage multi-species habitats to enrich the areas, which in turn makes the farming of livestock and arable products sustainable.
“In order to do this we need to be able to measure the baseline of the current situation, and that is where this project comes in.”
Dr Stella Peace, Executive Director for Healthy Living and Agriculture at Innovate UK, said: “These innovations are crucial for safeguarding our natural environment.
“By investing in these pioneering projects, we’re helping businesses unlock innovations that make life better, ensuring that the UK leads the way in developing sustainable solutions that benefit both our economy and our communities.”
The project will be put to the test in the spring of 2025 across the UK.
An expert ornithologist and ecologists will analyse and validate the results whilst the UK Agri-Tech Centre will help us to link outcomes to agricultural practices.