Inconsistent Results Published to BirdWeather

[RememberToBeKind]

BirdWeather is showing birds with as little as 72% confidence, while there are others with multiple detections and 99% confidence that are not publishing to the site. Station #22976 running on a Pi-5 if that helps.

[RonnyCHL]

That’s a known quirk and it can be confusing! The thing is, BirdWeather doesn’t just pass through BirdNET-Pi’s confidence scores directly. It applies its own scoring layer on top — including a “probability” based on species likelihood for your location and time of year, and a combined “score” from both. So a 99% BirdNET confidence detection can still get filtered out on BirdWeather’s side if the species probability for your area is low, while a 72% detection of a common local species might show up just fine.

A couple of things worth checking:
First, have a look at your BirdNET-Pi logs to see if the detections are actually being posted successfully. You’d want to look for the Soundscape POST Response Status — if it’s 200, the data is reaching BirdWeather but getting filtered on their end. If you’re seeing errors, it might be an upload issue.
Also worth double-checking your BirdWeather token in BirdNET-Pi settings, especially if you’ve done any updates recently.
Beyond that, there’s not a whole lot you can do on your end unfortunately. BirdWeather has acknowledged that their species probability model sometimes makes mistakes and they’ve been working on an improved version. So it should get better over time.

In the meantime, your local BirdNET-Pi data is the most complete and reliable record of what’s actually being detected at your station.

Ronny

[RememberToBeKind]

Thank you. Below are what my logs show. I take it 201 is good? When I do an internet search for that string it seems that is not bad. The token appears correct, but I tried to copy and paste it again in hopes that I missed something. Thanks again for your help.

17:22:15---[utils.reporting][INFO] Soundscape POST Response Status - 201
17:22:18---[utils.reporting][INFO] Detection POST Response Status - 201
17:22:22---[utils.reporting][INFO] Detection POST Response Status - 201

[RonnyCHL]

Yes, 201 means “Created” — your detections are being successfully posted to BirdWeather. So the upload side is working fine.

If you’re still not seeing certain species on your BirdWeather station page, it’s likely BirdWeather’s own filtering on the display side. They apply a separate probability layer based on species likelihood for your location and time of year, which can hide detections even though they were received.

Your local BirdNET-Pi database will always have the complete picture.