AI: Technology helping farmers monitor wildlife

Chirrup records and identifies birdsong to build a database of bird populations

Farmers are beginning to use artificial intelligence (AI) to keep an eye on the level of wildlife on their land.

A system called Chirrup was founded by Cheltenham developer Conrad Young.

It identifies individual bird species from recordings of the dawn chorus.

It logs the recordings to build a picture of the bird population, which helps indicate levels of biodiversity. As more sounds are recorded, it builds an increasingly detailed database.

"It's pretty much like having a real human sitting here 24/7 and listening when we tell it to listen," said Mr Young.

Conrad Young developed the Chirrup AI software

Farm manager Peter Cheek has started using the system at his Godminster farm which converted to an organic farm in 1999.

Mr Cheek said it was an affordable way of measuring farm diversity on a regular basis, and hoped knowing more about the birds on the farm would give him more information about the security of his crops.

"They tell you what insects are about and obviously we are organic, so we don't use any insecticides, or sprays or anything like that.

"So if we have got those insects and the birds are eating them, they are also eating other bugs that are trying to damage the crops.".

Peter Cheek said the system gives him a 365 snapshot of the health of the farm and the planet

Over time, the system becomes more capable of assessing what it picks up.

Mr Young said: "Strangely, the computer isn't really listening to sound, it's looking at a spectrogram - so a picture of the sound."

Mike Jones, dairy technology manager at Agri-EPI, believes AI can help farmers in a number of ways

Mike Jones, who helps run pioneering farm engineering projects from a centre in Shepton Mallet, believes AI Is revolutionising productivity in farming.

"It is about learning how to use this technology to the advantage of the environment, the farm business itself and just to make everything more efficient," he said.

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