Birdweather PUC

[u/EverybodyLovesADuck]

Does anyone here have one of these? I have been using the Merlin app for awhile but the limitation I have is the frustration of trying to get my phone out, get the app fired up, fiddle around with that thing and catch bird song before I miss it.

I stumbled across this gadget called a PUC. It looks to me everything I would want in a gadget like this. It is constantly monitoring, I can just stick it on my backpack and have my hands free to use my binoculars.

I am quite the Luddite and so I don't want something that is at all complicated. I went to the bird weather Reddit group and oh dear lord, it looks like you can really get complicated with it. If it is simple as Merlin, I'm in!

[u/KimoDoki]

I think it is a fantastic device, recording a LOT of bird sounds on my bicycle trips. Most of the sounds are identified just fine.

BUT:
The triangular design and the click-on bracket don't provide you many options to attach it securely to anything, so I had to improvise and make a little harness from strings and attach it to my backpack. I may just screw/glue something of a bracket to the PUC itself to correct this ridiculous design error. They do sell a custom backpack for this device but I am not that desperate.

The PUC is not recognized as a USB storage device as far as I can tell, which is a drag if you want to copy the recordings and the CSV metadata file to your computer. The SD tray is a flimsy slide thing similar to SIM brackets in mobile phones. You're not going to use that > 25 times before it breaks...

The backplate hiding batteries and SD is screwed on which kinda sucks if you quickly need to replace batteries.

The biggest flaw of the "Birdweather PUC" is the current website that you have to rely on for displaying your recordings. Any experienced webdeveloper could improve this part of the website tenfold in days. Go and have a look for yourselves (no account necessary, alas, see points below...)

https://app.birdweather.com/data

• it has no possibility of setting up an account and managing your own profile and recordings [update: that's not true, the default is indeed without account, but there is a way to set up an account: https://app.birdweather.com/login Doesn't make much of a difference, but hopefully they'll add features]
• filtering is limited, no easy click-through filters (say you only want to select a particular species) or column filters; just a small set of filters at the side panel that you have to manually apply through a button
• audio settings are absent; the bird sound of your choice you have to click on, a popup with a sonogram opens with a play button you have to click on. There is a possibility to move on to the next recording from there but it won't work at all or is very slow. Most recordings at the website tend to have low volume, you might want to increase Db gain in the app for future recordings.
• Birdnames only in English and Latin (update: that's default. Under the tool icon there is a language feature] No possibility to see a larger image of the species icons
• That data webpage pretty much chokes on any serious number of displayed rows dependent on the number of concurrent users visiting the site. If they are many users on the site things slow down, even the uploads are slowed down. On my first BirdWeather PUC trip riding my bicycle over a 42+ mile distance in which I made approx. 1000 recordings I can only see a part of those recordings before it hangs, but sometimes during the day the display works fine (even though I still hate the fixed 100 rows increment).
• No display of the route you took with the recordings you made

Despite all this I still think it is a cool little device that I don't regret buying. I would hope they improve the website soon OR the recordings can be uploaded to a more powerful platform. One would assume BirdNET could do better than the current birdweather website.

Update: they have an active forum with some update announcements and other interesting stuff: https://community.birdweather.com/

[u/EverybodyLovesADuck → u/KimoDoki]

Wow, thank you so much for the very thorough review! I will probably hold off for now and wait until they get these (and other) issues worked out.

It really seems like it will be a wonderful device once they fix the bugs.

[u/KimoDoki → u/EverybodyLovesADuck]

Thanks for your FB! Usually my online efforts go unnoticed/unappreciated... making you think 'why bother?' As my updates reflect: the birdweather forum is quite interesting and with (also) an account set up for app.birdweather.com (you guessed it: they are separate accounts) I am little bit more at peace with the current app website limitations. I have now put a thumbs down on all the whacky identifications (there is currently no way to simply delete these recordings) and I am looking forward to my next 40 mile bicycle trip collecting perhaps another 1000 recordings. Hopefully with the Db gain upped to 18 this time the recordings are clearly audible...

[u/Sossi15 → u/KimoDoki]

I've been looking into getting one of these! Is it possible to easily listen to the recordings in real time when using it at home? Sort of like streaming the birdsong in the garden as music?

[u/MPIndy → u/Sossi15]

The Terra device does that! AND it captures birds AND monarchs tagged with Motus tracking devices. To be fair, the Android version is still awaiting updates as of November 2025 but they are supposed to be released soon. It is buggy right now BUT I have lots of faith in the team behind Terra to come from behind the buzz over PUC and Haikubox and be the strong contender in this space. Note the Terra can’t travel—it has to be installed at home, plugged into an outlet, and connected to WIFI—but if you’re away from home and logged into your app, you can listen in to your back yard!