This application idea is one that I’ve been wishing I could do for quite some time. My mother happens to be part of a large bird migration study on lake Ontario, recently reported on Science Friday. Having gone bird banding many times, I can tell you that they are doing things practically in the stone age. Building a smartphone application to assist them with the banding process would be extremely helpful, but completely unprofitable.

The Bird Tag application I have in mind would help facilitate the entire process of bird banding. The application’s features could include:

• Geo-tagging net locations. So you know where your bird nets currently are, as well as where you placed them last time you were out banding.
• Net cataloging. Since you know where your nets are, and which net you caught a bird in, you could start building a map of where you’re most successful at netting birds.
• Photographing and sizing. It would be great to build some kind of dock that a smartphone sits in, so that you can just photograph a bird’s wing, and the camera distance is all worked out to measure it.
• Real-time data syncing. Currently, all records are hand written on paper, then mailed in to be data entered somewhere. Having data entered and transferred digitally would be a huge improvement to speed, and data accuracy.
• Bird recognition. Facial recognition software could be used to figure out the type of bird your banding. Often, non-bird fanatics (like myself) assist in banding the birds. Helping them classify the birds would be a huge help, and free up the leader’s time.

The goal would be to find ways to assist and improve both the ease, and accuracy of bird banding data collection.