A listening network for local wildlife.
Project S.W.A.N. stands for Scientific Wildlife Acoustic Network. It is a growing network of passive listening stations that help detect bird calls, understand local wildlife activity and turn soundscape data into useful public information.
The project is built around a simple idea: wildlife is often present even when people are not there to see it. By listening carefully and responsibly, we can make local nature more visible, help schools learn from real data, and support better decisions about habitats before they are damaged or forgotten.
Purpose
Why build S.W.A.N.?
Many wildlife records depend on people being in the right place at the right time. But birds sing early in the morning, hide in hedges, call from trees, move through sites quietly and change their behaviour through the seasons.
S.W.A.N. helps fill some of those gaps by listening passively. It does not replace expert surveys, but it can create a useful stream of local evidence that helps people ask better questions about wildlife and habitat.
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Make wildlife visible
Bird activity often happens when people are not watching. Acoustic monitoring helps reveal what is being heard across the day, week and season.
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Avoid disturbance
Stations listen passively. They do not attract, handle, chase, tag, disturb or interfere with wildlife.
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Share local data
The website turns raw detections into station pages, public summaries, school dashboards and learning resources that are easier to explore.
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Grow over time
As more stations are added, the network can compare activity between different places, habitats and seasons.
What the project does
From birdsong to public understanding.
Project S.W.A.N. collects acoustic wildlife detections from listening stations, stores the results, and presents them in a way that local people, schools and future conservation partners can understand.
01
Listen
A small station records short sections of the local soundscape using a microphone.
02
Detect
AI-supported acoustic recognition suggests which bird species may have been heard.
03
Record
Species, time, confidence, station and audio information are stored as a detection record.
04
Explain
The website turns the data into maps, pages, dashboards, games and public learning tools.
Why listening nodes help
A node is more than a microphone. It is a long-term wildlife witness.
A single person might visit a place for ten minutes and miss most of what happened. A listening node can keep collecting evidence repeatedly, helping build a clearer picture of activity over time.
When nodes are placed across different habitats, the network becomes even more useful. It can compare school grounds, gardens, woodland edges, fields, villages, wetlands and public spaces.
They capture activity people miss
Dawn chorus activity, evening calls, quiet hidden birds and repeated seasonal patterns can all be missed by casual observation.
They help compare habitats
A site with hedges, trees and water may sound very different from one with short grass, hard surfaces and little cover.
They create a long-term record
Long-term listening can help show seasonal change, repeated use of a site and possible changes after habitat improvement.
They support better questions
The data can help people ask: what is using this place, when is it active, what habitat does it need, and how could the site be improved?
Helping protect birds
The project helps by making wildlife harder to ignore.
Birds can be harmed by changes that seem small: cutting dense hedges at the wrong time, removing berry bushes, clearing leaf litter, losing insect habitat, over-tidying wild corners, disturbing nesting areas or increasing light and noise.
S.W.A.N. helps prevent damage by giving people better visibility. If a station repeatedly detects bird activity, that evidence can encourage people to pause, check the habitat, and make more careful decisions before changing the site.
Before work happens
Listening records can show that birds are actively using an area before hedges, shrubs, trees, grass margins or wild corners are changed.
During habitat planning
The data can support conversations about keeping cover, adding native planting, protecting insects, reducing disturbance and improving food sources.
After improvements
If a school or community adds a pond, hedge, bird boxes, long grass or native flowers, continued listening can help show whether wildlife activity changes.
Through education
When children learn which birds use their school grounds, they are more likely to value the habitat and understand why it should be protected.
Who it is for
A project for schools, communities and local nature.
S.W.A.N. is designed to make wildlife monitoring easier to understand. It is technical underneath, but the output should be useful to people who simply want to know what is happening around them.
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Schools
Teachers can use real local detections to support lessons about birds, habitats, data, seasons, food chains and conservation.
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Communities
Local people can explore what birds are being heard around nearby stations and better understand the wildlife around them.
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Habitats
The project can support conversations about trees, hedges, ponds, wildflowers, long grass, nesting spaces and quieter wildlife corridors.
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Learning
The data gives children a practical way to see how science, technology and nature can work together.
Responsible monitoring
Useful data must be interpreted carefully.
Acoustic monitoring is powerful, but it is not perfect. A detection is a model-supported signal, not automatic proof. Weather, distance, road noise, overlapping calls, microphone position and unusual sounds can all affect results.
That is why S.W.A.N. focuses on transparency, confidence scores, repeat patterns and careful wording. The aim is to inform and educate, not to exaggerate what the data can prove.
Non-invasive by design
Listening stations do not interfere with birds or habitats. They only collect environmental sound evidence.
Confidence matters
Higher confidence can be useful, but unusual or important records should still be checked against the audio where possible.
Patterns matter more than one-offs
Repeated records over time are usually more useful than a single unusual detection.
A missing record is not absence
A bird may be present but silent, too far away, masked by noise or outside the listening range of the microphone.
The long-term vision
A local wildlife record that grows stronger every year.
The more the network listens, the more useful the records become. Over time, S.W.A.N. can help compare seasons, support school learning, show how habitats are changing, and provide evidence for future conservation work.
The long-term aim is to create a practical bridge between technology and nature: simple enough for children to explore, detailed enough to support meaningful local conversations, and careful enough to be trusted.
Future direction
More public stations
Expanding the network to create a richer local soundscape map.
Better school resources
Activities, games, dashboards and lesson packs using real station data.
Habitat improvement tracking
Comparing activity before and after wildlife-friendly changes.
Public summaries
Turning long-term data into readable updates for communities and partners.
Simple principle
Listen first. Disturb nothing. Learn more. Protect better.
Project S.W.A.N. is designed to be useful, understandable and respectful of the wildlife it monitors.