̽����ѡ

“Alexa, ask ̽����ѡ to play .”

With those eight words, Amazon’s voice-activated assistant gives you one of the sweetest songs on the planet.

“Alexa, ask ̽����ѡ to play .”

With that, you're whisked��away to a beach in Monterrey, where plovers scurry between dune and wave.

That’s the kind of effect Ed Norris wanted��when he designed the ̽����ѡ Bird Songs Alexa skill. The software architect, who splits his time between Ohio and Kentucky, loves to study birds on his fishing and camping trips. Hearing the species’ voices, he says, helps pull him back to those places.

Which is where Alexa comes in. At first, Norris��used the technology to fetch sounds from Google searches—but the results weren’t always accurate. So, he��decided to cut out the middleman by “teaching” Alexa to link common species names back to the ̽����ѡ Guide to North American Birds. The ̽����ѡ went all in��on the offer, granting him access to thousands of clips��recorded by .��It took Norris about a week to program the commands; refining them, however, took months.

Here’s how the call-and-response system works. Norris recreated the ̽����ѡ song��library within the Alexa universe��and��built a custom skill to read any��“ask ̽����ѡ" request.��The software��then accesses��Amazon’s Cloud-based services, pulling��the correct audio for Alexa to broadcast through an Echo or Dot device.

Of course, this all happens in a fraction of a second, so the user experience is simple and streamlined. All a bird enthusiast has to do is say, “Alexa, ask ̽����ѡ to play [insert common species name]“ or “Alexa, ask ̽����ѡ what a [insert common species name] sounds like.” If there are multiple calls and songs, Alexa will rotate��through when told to “play the next one.”

The rate of success��is high, Norris says, but there are some variables. To start, Alexa��needs to get accustomed to the owner’s voice and dialect (this can be done by reading off a standard list of phrases during setup). Norris also taught the software��to pick up 69 different utterances, which means there’s some leeway in how the commands can be given. Finally, there are a few bird names that are hard to translate: Northern Saw-whet Owl, Pyrruhloxia, and even Snowy Plover may be met with an awkward Alexa silence. To tackle those species, dictate each word slowly (even robots��have a slight learning curve).

For his part, Norris is tracking every delivery from the ̽����ѡ library��to log any errors and misses. And when he’s not improving the skill, he reaps its rewards by having Alexa recreate the chatter��from the three feeders in his yard. “I hope people can use this tool to learn that communication in the bird world��is��a lot larger than they realize,” Norris says. Alexa, can we get an amen?

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