Follow “The Penguins of the Baltic Sea” – With Audio and Video

This year’s live broadcast tracking the breeding of the common murres at Stora Karlsö in the Baltic sea has now begun. New for this year is the option to listen to the seabirds as well.

“It feels like we’ve only scratched the surface of the common murres’ soundscape,” according to a press release.

On Stora Karlsö, just west of Gotland, the seabirds lay their eggs on cliff ledges 40 meters above sea level. At just three weeks old, the chicks leave the nest even though they cannot fly. They jump from the cliffs down to their fathers waiting by the sea. With their soft skeletons and extra fat on their bellies, they survive the fall.

For a couple of months, anyone interested can watch in real time as the eggs are laid on the cliff ledges, the chicks hatch, and take their first leaps down toward the beach.

The live stream can be viewed via the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) website.

And this year, you can even hear the birds.

“These aren’t just any sounds, but include a special call that the chicks use to find their father among hundreds of other fathers out at sea,” says Jessica Ångström, an art expert at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

AI models are now also being trained to identify and group different calls.

“The sounds open a whole new window into the lives of the guillemots. We can start to hear when fish arrive at the ledge, how pairs and chicks communicate, and even find signs that individual chicks have their own voices,” say Delia Fano Yela and John Martinsson of the research institute Rise, which developed the AI model.

This year, viewers can also report what is happening in different video clips. This could involve birds squabbling or a bird arriving with a fish.