Today, I set up my new Birdnet-Pi,a raspberry Pi, running an app that detects and identifies birds by their calls. This is my first half day of recording birds.
Image description: A screenshot of the Birdnet Pi web interface. At the top, it shows a breakdown of birds from that day, sorted by species and time. In order of total number of occurrences, the birds listed are Torresian Crow, Australasian Figbird, Noisy Miner, Barn Owl, Rainbow Lorikeet and Blue-faced Honeyeater. Beneath the list of birds, it shows a waveform graphic for the audio of the latest bird call identitied by the system. In this instance, a Torresian Crow.
For those of us without the skill or kit (me!), Cornell Labs Merlin Bird ID can do the live identification part in quite a pleasing manner on an Android phone. However, the logging and kit that is practical to leave running for 24 hours is probably beyond it.
To OP, I’d have thought better mikes would allow identification of quieter calls, and be better at avoiding misidentifying non-bird noise, so might still have value.
I’ll get back to you when I’ve got enough data to compare a cheap mic with a good mic