Bernarda Vásquez Ávila
- @BernardaVA
- | She, her
Hello everyone,
I am currently working with bird banding data in Ecuador as part of a long-term monitoring program that has been running for over 20 years. Over the past two years, we have expanded the project by deploying AudioMoth recorders to collect additional acoustic data in an Andean montane forest.
I am a biologist with some basic understanding of how audio analysis works, but I would like to deepen my knowledge in bioacoustics and automated sound analysis. As I begin working with these recordings, I would really appreciate advice on how to get started.
What would you recommend as the first steps?
Are there specific tools, workflows, or learning resources that you consider essential for beginners working with bird acoustic data?
Thank you very much for your time and guidance.
31 December 2025 4:47am
Hey,
Did you checkout Wildlabs Acoustics course yet?
Introduction to Acoustic Monitoring | WILDLABS
Learn passive acoustic monitoring fundamentals for wildlife research and conservation.
Do check out these general-purpose bioacoustics resources:
bit.ly/bioacoustics-resources
Cheers
Arky
5 January 2026 6:39pm
I guess, my advices are very common.
- first learn about your data (e,g. load data into audacity, listen to the data, with time-series and spectrogram switched on.
- take your language of preference (e.g. 'R', 'Python', 'Matlab', 'Scilab',....) and try to do the same
- load data
- plot time series
- generate spectrogram
- plot spectrogram
- start processing data before visualizing
- spectral filter (LP,BP,HP) around the signal of interest
- try different spectral representation (Fourier, Mel, Constant Q, etc)
- implement background estimator (compare mean and median/Percentile) to figure out the best method
- implement a detector of signals (calls, transients, etc)
- extract snippets to files
These steps may require a some internet searches, (especially language specific details of functions). For specific bioacoustic question, you can always ask at
Bioacoustics Stack Exchange
Q&A for people interested in the studies of non-human animal sounds and the impacts of sounds on animals
Having some analysis done by your own hand, you should be able to take any existing bioacoustic analysis tool (it seems every major lab has its own preferred tool) and concentrate on the implementation of the analysis path. You alwas can experiment within your own system, if something is unclear in other peoples software.
9 January 2026 3:01pm
This document is a bit dated, but I still find it to be a solid resource for beginners
Jesse Turner
Colorado State University
9 January 2026 3:20pm
Bernarda,
It depends on your specific goals and technical experience level. If your goal is acoustic classification of birds and you are a novice in bioacoustics, I would suggest getting familiar with two main programs: Raven Pro and BirdNET / BirdNET Analyzer.
Raven Pro is a program designed for labelling acoustic data which then can be used to train models. BirdNET is an existing powerful bioacoustics classification model (including more species than just birds, but focused more on birds). BirdNET Analyzer is a GUI program which uses the embeddings from the BirdNET model via transfer learning to create a custom classification model with examples (which can be created using Raven Pro). You do not need any coding to use BirdNET Analyzer. If you are interested in detecting only species that BirdNET already has in its model, you don't need to use Raven Pro to label audio for training a custom classifier and instead can just use the BirdNET Analyzer directly to get classification output from the model.
Feel free to reach out directly for more details/explanation if you'd like. Video tutorial from the developer of BirdNET (creating custom classifiers at minute 25):
Cheers,
Jesse
Arky