We used the tutorial at pixcams.com, with a few alterations. You can find a full write-up on github. Using the equipment list found there, the total per box came to about $240 CAD with shipping.

Visit our BirdNET-Pi listening stations!

We currently have the only BirdNET-Pi stations in Manitoba, but we're hoping to fix that! Each station is named after a wetland bird!

bobolink mallard americancoot canvasduck kingfisher bluejay ruddyduck surfbird

Find our data on Birdweather.com

I’m not sure what this is going to be yet, but it is my intention to build an organization around sustaining and protecting the Red River of the North, whose mouth is at Lake Winnipeg and whose tributaries stretch through Minnesota, North Dakota, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.

I dream of having a land-based research, education, monitoring and outreach centre on the banks of the Red, perhaps near the University of Manitoba where I am a professor. When I teach my students about the River — students who have grown up around the River their entire lives — they often express feelings of disgust, dismay, and grief about the state of the River. They don’t see it as a friendly presence in their lives, and so they don’t have strong feelings about maintaining and supporting the health of the River. I want to change that. I want to provide a setting where young people can work through their climate grief and contribute to the sustenance of the Red through STEM and land-based activities.

As a scientist who lives and works near the River, that means conducting scientific research in the region and publishing the results to a broad spectrum of interested parties, but it also means helping to clean it up and keep it clean. As a settler, that means Working In Good Ways with First Nations peoples through whose land the River passes. As a human being, that means listening to the Red, learning from it what it needs, and helping it sustain itself.

I would like this Red River Research project to include a spiritual perspective in addition to a scientific perspective, inspired by successes like the personhood designation of the Whanganui River in Aotearoa New Zealand — not just advocating for the River as an insentient object, but alongside it as a friend. That’s a big shift for most Western Scientists, so part of the challenge will be in working with scientists to convince them that this is a sensible, sane way to view the world.

So far I haven’t found an existing organization like this, although a number of organizations built to support Lake Winnipeg also do work on the Red, and a number of political organizations like the Red River Basin Commission exist to manage the trans-boundary nature of the River. Existing education and advocacy groups include The Lake Winnipeg Research Consortium, Lake Winnipeg Foundation, Lake Winnipeg Indigenous Collective (podcast), Environment Canada and others. There’s great people doing great work there and I hope to work with them as this project advances. I also have a lot of learning to do on existing projects in the basin.

I’m going to try to learn in public, and I invite you to learn with me. Some of my objectives for the coming year:

• An annotated bibliography of existing scientific research related to the Red River of the North in biology, hydrology, pollution, climate change, and other topics

• Updates on my own lab group’s investigations of the microbiology of the Red

• Videos and photos featuring my explorations of the Red River

• Organized trash clean-up days on the banks of the River

• A podcast interviewing people who live or work in, on, or with the River, including scientists, elders, water keepers, herbalists, boaters, fishers, the unhoused, and many others

I look forward to sharing my journey with you! Thanks and Miigwech!