discussion / Acoustics  / 1 July 2019

Audio analysis of flocks or swarms

Hi,

Here at BEESWAX8 we are working on identifying flocks of avains or swarms of insects by their collective noise. We have noticed already that this is more complex than identifying individuals of a particular species. We have identified main harmonics in a series of flock recordings, but with high individual variability? We are currently working with a mean trend?

Is anyone else looking into this, and can you offer any help, please? We can Skype or Zoom? Skype= sysenvir

www.facebook.com/projectbeeswax

Tally ho!

Andrew.




Hi Andrew,

I'm not a signals guy I'm afraid, but I was thinking perhaps one way might be to estimate the physical size of the flock/swarm by scanning with a microphone array.

BTW do you find it a problem if an individual happens to be too close and drowns out the rest?  In part it's a question of dynamic range but also of sensor placement.

Thanks,

-harold

So far we have been able to disambiguate between the flocks of two different species of small birds? Not easy. Our problem seems to be based around the fact that some or all flocks of small birds cheeping sound pretty similar? Of course the issue is: at what point is asynchronous sound aggregation just noise?

With regards to individual sounds, we are not interested in individuals at the moment so have not tested for it. I suspect however that in the interests of completeness we will be?

More anon,

Andrew.