xeno-canto is a

citizen science The term citizen science (synonymous to terms like community science, crowd science, crowd-sourced science, civic science, participatory monitoring, or volunteer monitoring) is research conducted with participation from the general public, or am ...

project and

repository Repository may refer to: Archives and online databases * Content repository, a database with an associated set of data management tools, allowing application-independent access to the content * Disciplinary repository (or subject repository), an ...

in which volunteers record, upload and annotate recordings of

bird calls Bird vocalization includes both bird calls and bird songs. In non-technical use, bird songs (often simply ''birdsong'') are the bird sounds that are melodious to the human ear. In ornithology and birding, songs (relatively complex vocalizatio ...

and sounds of

orthoptera Orthoptera () is an order of insects that comprises the grasshoppers, locusts, and crickets, including closely related insects, such as the bush crickets or katydids and wētā. The order is subdivided into two suborders: Caelifera – gras ...

and

bat Bats are flying mammals of the order Chiroptera (). With their forelimbs adapted as wings, they are the only mammals capable of true and sustained flight. Bats are more agile in flight than most birds, flying with their very long spread-out ...

s. Since it began in 2005, it has collected over 575,000 sound recordings from more than 10,000

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

worldwide, and has become one of the biggest collections of bird sounds in the world. All the recordings are published under one of the

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

licenses, including some with open licences. Each recording on the website is accompanied by a spectrogram and location data on a map displaying geographical variation. Data from xeno-canto has been re-used in many (a few thousand) scientific papers. It has also been the source of data for an annual challenge on automatic birdsong recognition ("BirdCLEF") since 2014, conducted as part of the Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum. The website is supported by a number of academic and

birdwatching Birdwatching, or birding, is the observing of birds, either as a recreational activity or as a form of citizen science. A birdwatcher may observe by using their naked eye, by using a visual enhancement device such as binoculars or a telescop ...

institutions worldwide, with its primary support being in the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

History

xeno-canto, which translates to "strange sound", is a sounds-only project seeking to highlight sounds of birds, rather than images or videos. xeno-canto was launched on May 30, 2005, by Bob Planqué, a mathematical biologist at VU University Amsterdam, and Willem-Pier Vellinga, a physicist who now consults for a global materials technology company. At the time of the launch, the site held recordings of only about 160 species and originally aimed to collect recordings of birds from Central and South America.

Growth

xeno-canto has now become global, expanding its coverage to North America, Africa and Asia, and finally to Europe and Australasia. By 2017, the data collection showed significant growth, containing about 360,000 recordings of about 9,750 bird species (which is nearly 90 percent of all bird species). Nevertheless, the collection is still far from complete. There are about 1,000 missing species, and for many species, there are only a few recordings, meaning they lack the variation in repertoire and dialect that the species display.

Goals

xeno-canto aims to utilize the capabilities of the internet to improve the general popularity, accessibility, and knowledge of bird sounds. So far, the recordings on xeno-canto have seen use in a variety of different ways including being featured on the Aviation Information System of India, contributing to the STERNA project, and being included in a Norwegian University's database. Since its founding, the website has set a number of set principles in order to keep the service community-driven. These principles include: * Anybody can contribute to the project. Aside from a few restrictions on the file size, users can upload any bird sound they find interesting. On top of uploading recordings, users can also write articles, comment on recording achievements, and even contribute to the website's code. * Recordings are shared. The Creative Commons licenses implemented by the website promote sharing. The bird sounds uploaded are intended to be re-used. Users can download individual recordings found when browsing or access the entire collection's database. * Recordings can be challenged. Fellow users can flag a recording as having an incorrect identification. The recording is then reviewed until agreed upon by the community, and the flag is reset by administrators. This process can vary in length, but most often takes a few days.

References

External links

* {{CitizenScienceNavBox Citizen science Bird sounds Acoustics Creative Commons