While our bird species recognition model is constantly improving and learning, it’s not perfect yet. If you (or the AI) can’t seem to identify a bird in your postcard, you can now ask the community by selecting the "Ask the Community" option in the postcard flow.
This option will submit your picture along with your username and the location of your feeder (as seen in Settings) to the WingBuddy section of the app, where the rest of the users will be able to see it and help you with the identification.
Please note that this feature is available for the app version 1.8.13, which will be gradually rolled out to all users.
How to get results back?
You will receive a notification about a positive identification once a consensus of certainty is achieved among our community of reviewers. This occurs when an image has garnered sufficient responses and one species secures a high enough percentage for the decision to be made automatically. Our system is designed to enable users to contribute even if they're not entirely sure of their answer. We aim to strike a balance between discouraging baseless guesses and encouraging community members to participate.
Additionally, we have a backup plan in place to guarantee accuracy. If any of the following conditions are met, we will forward the image to our in-house ornithologists for review: (1) the leading species did not receive a high enough percentage of votes, (2) there were an insufficient number of votes overall, or (3) the image was hidden (moved to trash) to reassess and ensure a correct identification is not possible. Our ultimate goal is to provide you with accurate information!
How to contribute?
If you would like to participate and help others in the community to identify birds, you can navigate to the WingBuddy section of the app, which is marked with the icon on the main navigation bar: once you’re in there, you can view the “pending” community postcards that are waiting for the community’s help.
If you’re not sure what the bird is, you can tap X or swipe left for the next postcard. If you do know the bird in the picture, you can find them in our database and submit your suggestion.
If for one reason or another, the postcard is unrecognizable (blurry, not full image, etc.), you can select the ‘trash’ icon and it’ll be hidden.
Your statistics
In the future, participating in bird identification will build up your profile, showcasing your total number of votes and the success rate of your answers.
But in this first version, you can see only the number of your identifications - your contributions to the community. However, we are logging all your contributions and will display them all once the time is right.