Birds at the dock
May 30, 2026: 15 species identified by BirdNET listening to the dock microphone. Northern Cardinal was the most active with 20 minutes active; Tree Swallow traveled farthest, a 3,700 mi round trip.
Minutes active by hour
Each bar counts the 1-minute windows in which BirdNET identified a species at high confidence (its minutes active), bucketed by Eastern Time hour. The dawn chorus typically peaks between 6 and 8 a.m.
Species heard
How this works
A microphone is mounted at the dock at Tennessee River Mile 559.5, listening to the lake 24/7. Audio runs through BirdNET from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, an open-source neural network that identifies bird species by sound. Detections at high confidence are tallied here.
Bird photos are pulled automatically from Wikipedia and cropped to the bird with YOLOv8 object detection. Individual photo credits are on each species' Wikipedia page.