Photo: Dave Curtis/Wikimedia Commons
A small, quail-like bird called the plains-wanderer hasn’t been seen in west Melbourne since 1989 — but thanks to new artificial intelligence technology, has been heard. Zoos Victoria, a zoo-based conservation organization, installed audio recorders and across tens of thousands of hours of recordings, an AI-powered tool identified its soft, low call at two sites. For Chris Hartnett, Zoos Victoria’s threatened species program coordinator, it was “like finding gold.” The bird, an indicator of healthy grasslands throughout southeastern Australia, is often called a ‘Goldilocks species’ because they like their grassland “not too dense, not too sparse, but just right.” The birds are 'very skilled at hiding in the tuffs of grass of their preferred terrain,” “birders” Ross and Melissa Gallardy noted in Budget Birders blog.
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