Bat Acoustic Monitoring

Conducting an acoustic driving survey is simple. An ultrasonic microphone is mounted on the roof of a vehicle using a PVC holder with a magnetic base. The mic is attached via a cable to an Anabat SD2 bat detector, which sits inside the car during the survey. You will drive an established 30-mile long route at a constant speed of 20 mph, starting exactly 45 minutes after sunset. A GPS will record your track. You will be able to hear the echolocation calls on the detector when you encounter a bat. Little brown bats (and other Myotis species) sound like this (MP3 file 79 kB) and silver-haired bats sound like this (MP3 file 33 kB).

The detector records a sonogram of each call; depending on the quality and type of call we may be able to identify which species produced it. We will use the timestamp on the call to link it to a location from the GPS track. You can see maps from previous surveys here.