Review: Larkwire

Birdsong doesn't come easily to me. At all. Between the two of us, Maureen is usually the first one to associate a song or a call with this or that species, and I end up learning the ID, eventually, from her.

We've bought a Peterson cd for Eastern and Central North America, but the rapid cycling through of entire groupings quickly overwhelms me. I did find this method helpful for owls and gulls, where the juxtaposition of differently-sounding species is readily apparent, but for some of the other families, it's going to take an insane amount of repetition before the songs seem even vaguely familiar.

We also have iPhone apps that play birdsong, like iBird, Audubon, and BirdsEye. I haven't found these to be great tools for learning songs cold, although they do have their uses in their field. For instance, if I hear a call, and have an idea who might have made it, I'll play the song back to myself check whether I was right. And if I was, then the association will be even stronger from then on.

So, since I was still on the lookout for an effective tool for learning birdsong, I happily accepted when we were approached to review Larkwire in early December. In many ways, Larkwire is exactly what I've been hoping to find: it's interactive, it's immersive, and it never gets dull. I will state upfront, however, that I found there to be certain performance issues, which prevent me from giving this the full-throated endorsement that I so want to give, but I'll discuss these in more detail toward the end of the review, and hopefully these will be addressed by the developers.

So what is Larkwire? Larkwire is an internet app that groups together similar sounding-species, giving you the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the songs and calls of each. But the real fun and novelty lies in the games. Once a user feels she's ready to to be tested, she can choose between one of the two games that are available: The Gallery or The Field. Of the two, The Field requires more comprehensive knowledge, because the user hears songs and from a greater variety of species. It's designed to be a simulation of the sounds you hear in the field, when you never know what you might hear next.

As a novice, The Gallery is where I spent my of my time, since this is where you learn to sort out similar-sounding birds from one another. After selecting a group, songs are played in a random sequence, requiring the user to indicate which species was heard after each one. The goal is to score five correct answers for each species, and Larkwire keeps track of which species and which groups the user has completed. This information is saved to your account, so that it's available every time you sign in, and the user is able to keep track of which birds she's already mastered, and where they could use more practice.

But wait, you're not alone! "Larkwire tracks every single learning event in your history and uses adaptive algorithms to adjust to your learning pace and style. Because it is based on the way your mind works, the longer you use it, the better it adapts to you." That's pretty damn cool. In other words, Larkwire isn't just a passive, encyclopedic receptacle of birdsong, it's actively trying to help you learn.

The way to begin using Larkwire is to select a group that you want to test yourself on. For instance, say I want to try my hand at buzzy-sounding warblers. Larkwire will select four of the species and display their pictures. You can spend as much time as you want clicking on each picture and familiarizing yourself with the characteristics of their songs.

When you click the info button, the pictures change into descriptions of each birds' song. This might give you something like "Three-parted buzzy song, fastest in the middle and rising at the end" (Cerulean Warbler), or "Simple bubbling gurgle, then very high whistle" (Brown-headed Cowbird). As somebody who lacks the vocabulary for even attempting to describe birdsong, I found this incredibly helpful. Having the words to accompany strange, often foreign or otherworldly patterns of sounds is almost certainly the easiest and best way to ensure that you'll know it better the next time you hear it. This is particularly true of the pneumonic devices that are sometimes given: See you see you see you early-in-the-spring (Louisiana Waterthrush), or Oh oh, my my, it's-such-a-beautiful day (Vesper Sparrow). Knowing how birdsong might be described, it's easy enough take this skill outside of the game, to try giving your own descriptions to songs you hear in the field.

Another great feature is the way the user can choose to listen to the songs that are more likely to be close to home. There are separate songpacks that can be purchased for either the Western or the Eastern/Central Regions. If you own both, you can select either one, or choose to include the entire North American collection in your experience. And when you click on a group name from the menu bar,   you have the option to play regional variants of each species' song. 

But as much as I might want to rave about Larkwire, the experience for me was a bit uneven. Every time I began a session, I wanted to nothing more than to jump in headfirst and explore uninterruptedly for hours at a time. The problem was that the playback stalled much too often. Every several plays, in fact, I would experience one of two problems: either I would get a buffering signal, or the progress bar would move forward without playing any sound. On average, I would estimate that these problems occurred as often as 1 out of every 10 songs, and it really takes your head out of the game.

I can't completely rule out the possibility that the problem was somewhere on my end (although I doubt it). Assuming this is truly a streaming issue, the obvious solution would be to turn Larkwire into a downloadable app, rather than just an online one. The site's FAQ explains that they don't "yet" have a native app, so it's possible that one is forthcoming. For now, the best way to determine whether this could also be a problem for you is to try it yourself. With no signup at all, Larkwire offers a free trial including 7 songs. Or for $3.95 you can access 25 birds from your state or province. 

Despite the issues I had, I do strongly recommend that you look into this product and decide for yourself. It's a truly novel product for learning birdsong, and, as I've mentioned above, it was just what I've been hoping to find. It just might be the product you've been looking for, too. 

Have you tried Larkwire? Let us know what your thoughts are in the comments. I'd be particularly interested to know whether other people have been experiencing the same issues that I had.