<p>Thank you for applying your model to some of Orcasound's open audio data.</p>
<p>The whistles in question are calls made by a local bird, the Pigeon Guillemot. You can compare your recording to the <a href="https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Pigeon_Guillemot/sounds#" rel="nofollow noreferrer">McCauley Library recordings Pigeon Guillemot song and calls from AK and WA</a></p>
<p>I only know this because many times in the past few years, these calls have fooled the <a href="https://ai4orcas.net/portfolio/orcahello/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">OrcaHello model (SRKW call binary classifier)</a>! You can hear many &quot;false positives&quot; by loading the <a href="https://aifororcas.azurewebsites.net/Dashboard" rel="nofollow noreferrer">OrcaHello Dashboard</a> (filtered for all time, not just the latest month) and then searching the tag field for &quot;Pigeon Guillemot.&quot; Here is <a href="https://aifororcas.azurewebsites.net/detections/detection/a55cd61d-ee40-4a49-920c-168fbf3408e6" rel="nofollow noreferrer">one good example of WA guillemot calls from April</a> (close to the time of year when your model detected them, i.e. May).</p>
<p>This is the time of year when the birds next underneath piers and wharfs around Puget Sound (the also nest in burrows within sandy bluffs). The fledglings can be quite noisy, especially when an adult returns with food! And Orcasound hydrophones are so shallow that we often pick up bird noises that propogate from air to water and then to the hydrophone, especially when the tidal height is low. (In fact, some of our hydrophones become microphones at the lowest tides of the year!)</p>
<p>Keep up the great work. I'm looking forward to a day when models like yours listen (together with humans?) to live audio streams from nature and can let us know when a marine bird is present, rather than just an endangered killer whale.</p>
<p>Scott (in Seattle)</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-06-01T13:31:29.850Z
I love when there is a clear, but very unexpected, answer to a mystery sound!!
selene
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-05-31T18:29:46.767Z
2024-05-31T18:29:46.767Z
Scott Veirs
<p>The sighting is in this creative commons repo I am curating: <a href="https://huggingface.co/datasets/DORI-SRKW/DORI-Orcasound/blob/main/data/rpi-port-townsend_2020_05_18_12_31_31.flac" rel="noreferrer">https://huggingface.co/datasets/DORI-SRKW/DORI-Orcasound/blob/main/data/rpi-port-townsend_2020_05_18_12_31_31.flac</a></p>
<p>The whistles start at 2020-05-18 9:23:31 UTC from the Orcasound hydrophone near Port Townsend (1:23 AM local time). They continue until 2020-05-18 14:33:29 UTC (6:33 AM local time). Later in the morning a gray whale was spotted nearby, but no other marine mammal sightings were made. I am familiar with Bigg's, SRKW, humpbacks, sea lions, and pacific white-sided dolphins in the region. It does not sound like any of these.</p>
<p>Any ideas which species this is?</p>

<marine-mammals><species-identification><whistles><cetacean>
Help identifying a marine mammal from near Port Townsend, Washington, USA
# Help identifying a marine mammal from near Port Townsend, Washington, USA

(Asked by: username_0 on 2024-05-31)

The sighting is in this creative commons repo I am curating: <https://huggingface.co/datasets/DORI-SRKW/DORI-Orcasound/blob/main/data/rpi-port-townsend_2020_05_18_12_31_31.flac>

The whistles start at 2020-05-18 9:23:31 UTC from the Orcasound hydrophone near Port Townsend (1:23 AM local time). They continue until 2020-05-18 14:33:29 UTC (6:33 AM local time). Later in the morning a gray whale was spotted nearby, but no other marine mammal sightings were made. I am familiar with Bigg's, SRKW, humpbacks, sea lions, and pacific white-sided dolphins in the region. It does not sound like any of these.

Any ideas which species this is?

**Tags:** marine-mammals, species-identification, whistles, cetacean


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2024-05-31. Score: 2 | Accepted answer

Thank you for applying your model to some of Orcasound's open audio data.

The whistles in question are calls made by a local bird, the Pigeon Guillemot. You can compare your recording to the [McCauley Library recordings Pigeon Guillemot song and calls from AK and WA](https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Pigeon_Guillemot/sounds#)

I only know this because many times in the past few years, these calls have fooled the [OrcaHello model (SRKW call binary classifier)](https://ai4orcas.net/portfolio/orcahello/)! You can hear many "false positives" by loading the [OrcaHello Dashboard](https://aifororcas.azurewebsites.net/Dashboard) (filtered for all time, not just the latest month) and then searching the tag field for "Pigeon Guillemot." Here is [one good example of WA guillemot calls from April](https://aifororcas.azurewebsites.net/detections/detection/a55cd61d-ee40-4a49-920c-168fbf3408e6) (close to the time of year when your model detected them, i.e. May).

This is the time of year when the birds next underneath piers and wharfs around Puget Sound (the also nest in burrows within sandy bluffs). The fledglings can be quite noisy, especially when an adult returns with food! And Orcasound hydrophones are so shallow that we often pick up bird noises that propogate from air to water and then to the hydrophone, especially when the tidal height is low. (In fact, some of our hydrophones become microphones at the lowest tides of the year!)

Keep up the great work. I'm looking forward to a day when models like yours listen (together with humans?) to live audio streams from nature and can let us know when a marine bird is present, rather than just an endangered killer whale.

username_1 (in Seattle)

> **Comments:**
> **username_2**: I love when there is a clear, but very unexpected, answer to a mystery sound!!  

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