Wow! I’m so incredibly happy with this
I have been a birdwatcher for decades and have built up a fair knowledge of the birds that come to my feeders. And I knew there were birds in the area that I never saw, but sometimes heard. The Haiku Box has proven that I knew only about 25% of the birds that can be heard from my yard and I am so excited to learn about the rest. I put up my box up in mid-April 2024 and it is now early June 2024. The box has identified nearly 100 species of birds that can be heard from my yard! I wasn’t sure what the range would be but I’m pleased to say it is hearing birds I know are multiple blocks away. The app has so many incredible features. I started by listening to the short recordings - those are made by my box, usually during the current day. Then I can compare what I hear with the clearly linked recordings available under “About” and “EBird”. I can click to see a bar graph of which days that bird has visited our area, on a circle graph that shows me times of day the bird is most active, and much more information. The app is well designed and almost completely intuitive. The only thing that didn’t make sense to me right off is the blue screen shown when you click on the button that looks like a collection of solid circles. It turns out that is a graph of the sound you hear in the recording and if I play the recording while looking at the graph, I can understand the components of the bird’s song. And if I click on the EBird button, the recordings available there via the “Listen” button have the same kinds of graphs. This has allowed me to start learning to separate out the songs of different birds as well as helping me learn the varieties of song that type of bird might sing. Given that it is spring, the birds are all very vocal and I’m learning so much!
The HaikuBox is fairly expensive but it and the app are without a doubt my favorite purchase this year. I realize it isn’t 100% correct all the time, but it has such richness that there is something for every bird lover. I’ve been so excited about it that I’ve shown it to everyone I can!
The HaikuBox is fairly expensive but it and the app are without a doubt my favorite purchase this year. I realize it isn’t 100% correct all the time, but it has such richness that there is something for every bird lover. I’ve been so excited about it that I’ve shown it to everyone I can!
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Needs to spend more time on ID
This is a fabulous concept, but sadly it only seems to have about a 66% accuracy rate from what I can tell. Human birders need songsrepeated twice to be certain on an ID. This machine tends to only take a note or two and then take a stab at an identification. If only it were accurate with regard to some of the rare birds it claims to have been in or passed over my yard. This technology has a great promise if a little bit more time is allocated to ensure an accurate spectrograph is assigned to the correct bird. At this point, I cannot trust it for rare bird identifications and neither should you.
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Response from developer
We are always working to make identifications better, so please contact us at support@haikubox.com to discuss this issue.
Not accurrate enought
I’ve written before to Haikubox that it is much less reliable than recording through the Merlin ID app. Why? Because they are limiting the recordings to 3 seconds! That is not enough time to grab meaningful recordings or evaluate them afterwards. I don’t really know if they are evalutating longer stretches than 3 seconds, but if they are and not providing the option for those recordings, then they are failing their customers. I am looking forward to comparing with the soon-to-be-released Terra device.
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Very pleased
The Haikubox and the app are terrific. I highly recommend getting this device if you love birds! There are a number of ways to view the data, and you can receive notifications for selected, already heard birds and also previously unheard birds. The app is also attractive and naturally in dark mode, my preference
My wish list for the app includes being able to manage the timeframe for notifications on my own (currently it’s every 12 hours for each species), and to add alerts for birds that have not yet been heard by the app. I don’t want to get alerts every three seconds for house finches but I would select something more frequent than the current setting of once or max twice a day for snowy owls.
Is it 100% accurate? I’m fairly certain the many red shouldered hawk and possibly the yellow bellied sapsucker calls it hears are actually Blue Jays, and while redheaded woodpeckers could potentially appear here, I think it’s the red bellied woodpecker that it also heard at the same time. I can’t wait til mockingbird breeding season lol. No artificial intelligence is going to be 100% accurate, but I think this one is very close.
Support is also terrific - they reply quickly and with detail (that could probably go onto the website to avoid support questions :)
My wish list for the app includes being able to manage the timeframe for notifications on my own (currently it’s every 12 hours for each species), and to add alerts for birds that have not yet been heard by the app. I don’t want to get alerts every three seconds for house finches but I would select something more frequent than the current setting of once or max twice a day for snowy owls.
Is it 100% accurate? I’m fairly certain the many red shouldered hawk and possibly the yellow bellied sapsucker calls it hears are actually Blue Jays, and while redheaded woodpeckers could potentially appear here, I think it’s the red bellied woodpecker that it also heard at the same time. I can’t wait til mockingbird breeding season lol. No artificial intelligence is going to be 100% accurate, but I think this one is very close.
Support is also terrific - they reply quickly and with detail (that could probably go onto the website to avoid support questions :)
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Head over heels in love with my Haiku box!!!
Easy to install and literally no learning curve-I am so thrilled with my Haiku box. It’s a must for all bird lovers. It’s making me aware of birds that I didn’t know were nearby. At night it identifies the owls (and more!)! So cool!! I could go on and on. Bottom line, if you love birding, the Haiku box is a must-have. Put your name on the waitlist ASAP! I waited over a year and don’t regret one second. They are now back in production so your wait should be minimal.
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