On many evenings during spring and fall migration, tens of millions of birds take flight at sunset and pass over our heads, unseen in the night sky. Though these flights have been recorded for decades by the National Weather Services' network of constantly scanning weather radars, until recently these data have been mostly out of reach for bird researchers. That's because the sheer magnitude of information and lack of tools to analyze it made only limited studies possible, says artificial intelligence (AI) researcher Dan Sheldon at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Ornithologists and ecologists with the time and expertise to analyze individual radar images could clearly see patterns that allowed them to discriminate precipitation from birds and study migration, he adds. But the massive amount of information – over 200 million images and hundreds of terabytes of data – significantly limited their ability to sample enough nights, over enough years and in enough locations to be useful in characterizing, let alone tracking, seasonal, continent-wide migrations, he explains.

Each species of birds has a completely different and unique migration pattern. The majority of these birds fly north in the spring to breed in the temperature climates, or return in the autumn to wintering grounds in the south. However, it's not as clear cut as a pattern might indicate. With the heavy variety in bird species and the inevitable discovery of new ones as existing species crossbreed, migration patterns are expected to heavily change in the next decade. This is why artificial intelligence is becoming a powerful tool in recognizing these migration patterns - with its abilities to recognize the unique patterns of each species without falling ill to general conclusions. While many are in awe by artificial intelligence's vast capability in this sense, as it is able to store the migration information of each bird species successfully, these same individuals wonder on the significance of this knowledge.

Tens of millions of birds make migratory flights for the winter each year, often flying during nighttime. They're frequently spotted by the National Weather Services' network of 159 ground-based radars, which scan the skies every 4 to 10 minutes by emitting pulses of microwaves and measuring their reflections. However, ecologists have historically struggled to make use of the resulting data sets because of their sheer magnitude, which can range up to hundreds of millions of images and hundreds of terabytes over decades. In an effort to lighten the workload, scientists at Cornell's Lab of Ornithology and the University of Massachusetts' College of Information and Computer Sciences recently investigated an AI system capable of distinguishing birds in radar images from precipitation. They say that their tool, dubbed MistNet after the fine nets ornithologists use to capture migratory songbirds, not only aids with classification tasks, but can be used to estimate birds' flying velocity and traffic rates.

On many evenings during spring and fall migration, tens of millions of birds take flight at sunset and pass over our heads, unseen in the night sky. Though these flights have been recorded for decades by the National Weather Services' network of constantly scanning weather radars, until recently these data have been mostly out of reach for bird researchers. That's because the sheer magnitude of information and lack of tools to analyze it made only limited studies possible, says artificial intelligence (AI) researcher Dan Sheldon at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Ornithologists and ecologists with the time and expertise to analyze individual radar images could clearly see patterns that allowed them to discriminate precipitation from birds and study migration, he adds. But the massive amount of information--over 200 million images and hundreds of terabytes of data--significantly limited their ability to sample enough nights, over enough years and in enough locations to be useful in characterizing, let alone tracking, seasonal, continent-wide migrations, he explains.

IMAGE: Map colors indicate estimates of migration traffic from measurements at 143 radar stations. Locations are indicated by white circles, with size proportional to migration traffic at the station. On many evenings during spring and fall migration, tens of millions of birds take flight at sunset and pass over our heads, unseen in the night sky. Though these flights have been recorded for decades by the National Weather Services' network of constantly scanning weather radars, until recently these data have been mostly out of reach for bird researchers. That's because the sheer magnitude of information and lack of tools to analyze it made only limited studies possible, says artificial intelligence (AI) researcher Dan Sheldon at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.