Bird-identifying AI could put an end to leg bands

If you saw a finch one time, chances are you'd have great difficulty picking it out from a large group of finches later on. A new artificial intelligence-based system can do just that, though, potentially making life much easier for both biologists and the birds that they study. Ordinarily, if a wildlife biologist wants to track an individual bird, they have to capture it, put an identity band on its leg, release it, then later recapture it to read that band. Needless to say, doing so is quite a hassle for the scientist, and very stressful to the bird. There are now also remotely readable GPS tags, although these still have to initially be attached to the animal.