Artificial intelligence technology has proven itself useful in many different areas, and now birdwatching has gotten the A.I. treatment. A new A.I. tool can identify up to 200 different species of birds just by looking at one photo. The technology comes from a team at Duke University that used over 11,000 photos of 200 bird species to teach a machine to differentiate them. The tool was shown birds from ducks to hummingbirds and was able to pick out specific patterns that match a particular species of bird. "Along the way, it spits out a series of heat maps that essentially say: 'This isn't just any warbler. It's a hooded warbler, and here are the features -- like its masked head and yellow belly -- that give it away,'" wrote Robin Smith, senior science writer in Duke's communications department, in a blog post about the new technology.

The team found that the machine learning correctly identified bird species 84% of the time.