AI model developed to identify individual birds without tagging

For even the most sharp-eyed of ornithologists, one great tit can look much like another. But now researchers have built the first artificial intelligence tool capable of identifying individual small birds. Computers have been trained to learn to recognise dozens of individual birds – which could potentially save scientists arduous hours in the field with binoculars, as well as the catching of birds to fit coloured rings to their legs. "We show that computers can consistently recognise dozens of individual birds, even though we cannot ourselves tell these individuals apart," said André Ferreira, a PhD student at the Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (CEFE-CNRS), in France. "In doing so, our study provides the means of overcoming one of the greatest limitations in the study of wild birds – reliably recognising individuals."