I might be going batty...

[Stringmaker]

A neighbour of ours is involved with doing some bat surveying on local nature reserves.

For his reports to be credible, he needs someone with him to verify the report or somesuch, so me and Mrs Stringmaker expressed an interest.

He has some clever sonar directional listening kit and I think tonight might be our first session in a local wood.

I'm quite looking forward to it, even though all we'll probably see is the odd swooping black blob, but we might blag a listen on his headphones.

Anyone else gone batty in the past or are you batty now?

 

[MartiniDave]

A couple of years ago me and my wife went on a "bat punt safari" in Cambridge. A really fascinating evening travelling from Cambridge toward Grantchester in a couple of large punts with spotlights and bat detectors. Highly recommended.
I hope you have a great night.

Dave.

 

[British Red]

Our property is surrounded by flittermice- any time you walk around at dusk they will be flying around you. Wish I knew more about them to be honest

 

[JonathanD]

I used to be a bat worker years back. I still go out with a bat detector now and again. They are fascinating creatures to study and I'm sure you'll have great fun and get hooked.

 

[Stringmaker]

This is the third attempt at an inaugural session; rain/illness stopped play before.

I shall report back.

 

[Zingmo]

I have an app on my phone called Spectral Pro Analyser. It can detect sound at hihger frequencies than you can hear. I captured this sonogram one evening after I noticed that the bat was doing circuits of the house.

Z

 

[Stringmaker]

Nice one; I'll have a look for it later thanks.

 

[Pterodaktyl]

My wife is an ecologist and a large part of her work in the summertime consists of bat survey work. We also do a survey each year to monitor Daubenton's bats (the ones which feed by skimming low over the surface of the water) along a 1km stretch of the River Bovey in Devon.

A lot of the work these days is done using what is effectively the ultrasonic equivalent of a trail camera - a box you can leave out for days or weeks and which only records when it detects a bat flying past. You can then pull out a memory card, plug it into a computer and download a set of audio files, one for each bat pass. These can be analysed and the species of bat determined from the frequency and duration of the call - some recent software will even have a pretty good go at working out the species for you. Nothing beats actually walking round with the detector though!

Good luck with your visit, and I hope the weather holds for you - it's certainly been messing up my wife's survey schedule recently...

 

[Jackdaw]

T'is one of my specialist subjects. He'll be using either a frequency division or a heterodyne bat detector which enables you to listen into the calls of bats. Some species emerge upto 30 mins before sunset with most out within an hour of that so you do stand a good chance of seeing and hearing something. The Bat Conservation Trust has a great website with lots of information on the little critters.

Any questions then feel free to PM or check out my website although it's more to do with bats and planning than anything else.

 

[santaman2000]

What happens when you find a bat in the bedroom? http://youtu.be/TWCRZjUGVO4

 

[Jackdaw]

I have an app on my phone called Spectral Pro Analyser. It can detect sound at hihger frequencies than you can hear. I captured this sonogram one evening after I noticed that the bat was doing circuits of the house.

Z

View attachment 30625

Althought the software may be able to cope with higher than voice frequencies it is unlikely that the microphone in your phone is designed to pick up the kind of range where we find bats. Being a phone and designed to recieve and transmit a clipped voice signal (20 - 16khz) and because most bats call at 20khz to 120khz it is likely that for the software to work properly you need a specific optional microphone to record the calls. That said, if you have the original recording I can put it through my analysis software and see if I can ID it for you. Worth a try but I may only be able to get it down to the family group as apposed to the specific species.

 

[Zingmo]

I think you might be surprised at the quality of the microphones in smart phones. Mine has two Knowles S1039 electret condenser microphones. Knowles say that although the published specs are tested at 10kHz the mic can pick up sounds (albeit at reducing sensitivity) at much higher, even ultrasonic frequencies. Which is why they are used in bat detectors!
The sensor output in phones is available to an app in a raw state, so a well designed app can make use of the full capabilities of the mic. You can use a phone as a sound level meter for the same reason.
I have made myself an xlr adapter so I can use my phone to record with a professional mic but most of the time I don't bother.
The app I was using doesn't record the sound; that would require an ultrasonic a to d converter; it just gives a continuous scrolling picture of the sound spectrum. I use it for tracking down annoying feedback frequencies during sound checks. It's not a bat detector, but it is a fun toy.

Z

 

[Harvestman]

I've done quite a bit of bat recording this year, working part-time for a guy who does ecological surveys. In fact I would have been doing a dawn survey tomorrow morning with him if I wasn't currently without transport. it is a lot of fun, if you don't get eaten alive by midges, and you can see a lot of other nocturnal wildlife too. Last time I had a tawny owl swoop over a wall where I was surveying, and I don't think it saw me until the last moment as it nearly hit me in the head! Was a great sight as it pulled up suddenly and went over.

Bat detectors also work for recording some grasshoppers and crickets, and will detect them at greater ranges than human hearing.

 

[mrmike]

You can get a free app for android phones called batlib. It helps you to identify the bats that you are listening to on the bat detector

sent from my windswept fell using Tapatalk 4

 

[FGYT]

Found my Cut of Kydex bits infested with them today when i picked it up 4 biguns and 39 babies

 

[Stringmaker]

Well we went along to the heath where we met our neighbor and his recording kit.

Alas, just at the point where it was getting properly dusk, my gallstones were giving me merry hell and I hadn't got my codeine with me so we had to bail out and go home.

Up until that point though we heard a very vociferous cuckoo and also some nightjars which was a first for me so it wasn't all bad.

Next session (gallstones permitting) is in a couple of weeks.