Track Bird Visitors With a Raspberry Pi and a USB Mic

Per Hackaday, Avian Visitors is a clever new project that uses a Raspberry Pi and USB microphone to identify and log which birds visit your backyard. The system relies on BirdNET, a deep learning classifier developed at Cornell University that can recognize over eleven thousand bird species by their calls alone. Once identified, the system retrieves images from a regional bird reference library and assembles them into a colorful collage—viewable on a web dashboard or displayed live on an optional E-Ink panel. The size of each bird in the collage reflects how often it was heard; frequent visitors loom larger than rare guests. For automation enthusiasts, the project supports integration with Home Assistant or MQTT, enabling custom triggers based on specific species. All the code and documentation are available on GitHub.

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