Archive – Page 2 – Hoopoe

Supplier Interview: Jack Skuse of Ambios Ltd

Ambios are an educational charity based a mile or so down the river Dart from NHBS at a tenant farm on the historic Sharpham Estate. They provide conservation education, inspiration and training to a wide range of people at their farm, Lower Sharpham Barton. Over the last few years Ambios and NHBS have worked together on a range of products including the NHBS Kent Bat Box and reptile survey felts. The Lower Sharpham Barton site is managed by Jack Skuse.

Tell us a little about your organisation and how you got started.

Ambios Ltd are a nature conservation training organisation established in 2001. We aim to offer inspirational education, practical action, science and technology training and volunteering opportunities in the UK and EU. In partnership with Robert Owen Communities (ROC), a charity based in South West England supporting adults with learning disabilities, we run a farm on the stunning Sharpham estate outside Totnes, Devon. The aim of Lower Sharpham Farm is to use farming as a way of improving biodiversity, whilst offering people the chance to engage with wildlife and the outdoors – the farm runs as a care farm and base for our residential training activities. In partnership with UK and EU nature conservation organisations people can stay and learn at our farm, or in one of five EU countries including Norway, Hungary and Portugal. The people who engage with our farm (EU trainees, adults with learning disabilities) produce wildlife boxes for sale by NHBS.

What challenges do you face as an organisation working in the ecology/natural history sector?

There are a number of challenges we face, primarily relating to funding. We have historically accessed funding to run training for the next generation of wildlife professionals, as well as engaging and stimulating nature conservation-related provision for disabled people. This funding is proving harder to access, and we are aiming to diversify into a number of areas that generate revenue: training and volunteering placements where the learner pays, or is part subsidised by grant funding; wildlife experiences where learners can stay in our yurts for a number of days and gain employability skills and experience hands-on nature conservation projects, including bumble bee research, bird and badger surveys and practical habitat management; and producing, adding value to, and selling the products of the farm including organic beef, lamb, and eggs along with the wildlife boxes (typically made from wood sourced from the Sharpham Estate!).

What do you consider the most important achievement of your organisation in recent years?

To still be here 15 years later! We are proud of our legacy, and of the number and range of people who have benefited from our training, along with the wide and diverse network we have established here in UK and across EU. The farm tenancy is a leap of faith and grounds us in place and we are proud of the partnership with ROC and of the opportunities created here, and the potential available to us over the coming years.

What is your most memorable wildlife/natural history encounter?

I have seen wildlife around the world, and have strong memories of orca whales in Patagonia, and cobra snakes in Thailand (a close encounter whilst riding a bike). I was lucky enough to work with the Barn Owl Trust here in Devon, radio tracking barn owls whilst they fledged the nest for the first time. This close observation and appreciation of an enigmatic creature that is found here in UK was profound.

Ecology gifts raise money for key UK conservation charities

Lizzie Barker is a working ecological consultant, and the creator of gift and homeware design company, Creature Candy. This newly-launched enterprise produces quality British-made products featuring hand-drawn illustrations of wildlife. As well as raising profits for the Bat Conservation Trust, the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, and Butterfly Conservation, Creature Candy also intends to raise awareness around the conservation of our endangered and protected wildlife. We asked Lizzie how it all came about:

What are your background and current interests as an ecologist?

I studied Zoology between 2007 and 2010 at Aberystwyth University and graduated with a first degree. I then went on to work at Darwin Ecology in September 2010 as a consultant ecologist and have been there ever since. It’s a great company to work for and my job is very varied, although I specialise in bats. I hold a Natural England bat and great crested newt survey licence, but I also survey for dormice, badgers and reptiles. I love the spring and summer months so I can get outdoors and explore the English countryside for wildlife.

What’s the story behind Creature Candy?

I wanted to take more of a proactive role in wildlife conservation and raise money for the charities that I work so closely with as a consultant. Two years ago (whilst sitting on my sun lounger in Portugal) I came up with the idea of Creature Candy. I not only wanted to raise money for the charities, but also raise awareness of Britain’s declining & protected wildlife species, and to inspire people to take active roles in conservation. It was also incredibly important to me to change perceptions of bats, which is why my first design was a beautiful, charismatic brown long-eared bat illustrated in its true form, not a typical black silhouette with red eyes and fangs! It was also a priority to produce all our products with a “Made in England” stamp on them, which I think is very appealing in today’s market dominated by mass produced imported products.

How do you find the time to be an ecologist and an entrepreneur?

It’s a very hard balance to achieve. On a typical day, I switch off from the ecological consultancy world at 5pm, make myself a cup of tea and re-enter my office as the Director of Creature Candy. I then usually work for a few hours each night on marketing, processing orders and accounting, before spending some time with my husband before bed. It’s very important to find time for a social life and to relax, and I’m sometime guilty of over-working. However my husband is very supportive and I couldn’t manage the business without that support.

Can you tell us more about the artwork, and what’s to come for the range?

Our illustrations are hand drawn by my friend Jo Medlicott. Jo is a very talented artist and draws inspiration for our designs from photography and the natural world. Our next design is likely to be a red squirrel or a bird and we would like to introduce aprons and fine bone china jugs into the product range. The rest is top secret!

Browse Creature Candy products at NHBS

Collecting visual evidence of bats at roost entrances

Aim
Recording bats and their behaviour around roost entrances can be extremely useful for a number of reasons: as evidence to present to a client, to demonstrate or test for a change in behaviour during or after mitigation, and as a back-up system to record the presence of the quieter bats like the brown long-eared. We tested two night vision systems at a lesser horseshoe maternity roost.

Methods

We set up two very different night vision video recorders on tripods near the entrance of a large lesser horseshoe roost near Totnes, Devon. The first was the Yukon Stringer 5 x 50 Night Vision Monocular, a very reasonably priced Generation One night vision device with a built-in video recorder. The second was the Pulsar Quantum HD38S Thermal Imaging Scope, a thermal imaging camera with a 30 Hz refresh rate coupled with a Yukon MPR Mobile Player / Recorder. Both were used to film bats as they emerged from the roost entrance and as they flew around the garage within which the roost entrance is sited.

Results
The two videos below demonstrate close-up and distance footage from both the Yukon Stringer and the Pulsar Quantum:

Discussion

Image Quality: The Pulsar Quantum produced some very high quality video that was clear and easy to interpret. The results from the Yukon Stringer are slightly less clear but are still of sufficiently high quality for most purposes.

Usability: The Yukon Stringer does have a much narrower depth of field and due to the fixed zoom it proved very hard to get any decent footage of the bats flying around within the garage space.

Battery Life: The only drawback was the short battery life of both the Quantum and the Yukon MPR Mobile Recorder. To get round this we used the EPS5 External Battery on the Pulsar Quantum and changed the batteries of the Yukon MPR regularly – not the ideal solution but the cheapest way we know of to get some really impressive thermal imaging video.

Six eponymous bird name facts

This month sees the publication of Bo Beolens’, Michael Watkins’ and Michael Grayson’s The Eponym Dictionary of Birds – a major publication with over 4,000 entries to fascinate the curious-minded birder. Each entry explains the biography behind the people commemorated in bird names, from lesser-known but dedicated collectors to officers, dignitaries and royals. Such as:

Passerini’s Tanager and Salmon’s Jacamar

Professor Carlo Passerini (1793-1857), an Italian entomologist and an early enthusiast of scientific photography, and Colonel Thomas Knight Salmon (1840-1878), a British railway engineer whose lung disease forced him into retirement and to opening a naturalist’s shop, are perfect examples of the hundreds of entries concerning those dedicated relative unknowns whose efforts have added rich threads to the natural history of birds and beyond. Salmon’s health deteriorated and he travelled to Colombia for the better climate where he spent seven years. He died in England leaving a collection of 3,500 bird skins.

Adelie Penguin

This entry exemplifies a theme of dedicating the naming to one’s spouse, in this instance Adelie Dumont d’Urville (1798-1842), the wife of Admiral Jules-Sebastien-Cesar Dumont d’Urville, who first found this penguin. Various places in and around Antarctica were similarly honoured, including the Adelie Coast.

It is not only the eponymous common names that are included. So many latin names contain dedications too, for instance:

The Red-headed Parrotfinch, Erythrura cyaneovirens gaughrani was named after American waterpolo player Dr James ‘Jim’ Alan Gaughran – who, apart from appearing at the 1956 Olympic Games and acting as head coach of Stanford University’s waterpolo team from 1969-1973 – was with duPont on the 1970 expedition to Western Samoa during which the parrotfinch holotype was collected.

Dig around and it won’t be long before you discover some familiar territory:

Lewis’s Woodpecker is named after Captain Merriweather Lewis (1774-1809), one half of famous explorers, Lewis and Clarke. Their expedition of over 4,000 miles across the North American continent was rich in discoveries, not least the collection of the holotype of this woodpecker. It was collected in near Helena, Montana, and is now in Harvard, perhaps the only bird specimen left from the expedition.

Finally, it must be worth mentioning that the Great Egret has been known as Queen Victoria’s Egret. Victoria was opposed to the feather trade and ordered her regiments to stop wearing plumes in their uniform, giving her a royal place in bird conservation.

Micro photography with the Dino-Lite digital microscope

A digital USB microscope is a fantastic way to view and capture images of specimens and has many applications in the classroom, laboratory or at home. The Dino-Lite range of USB microscopes provides a large variety of models ranging from affordable microscopes for the amateur user to extremely high resolution, feature-packed options designed for the professional market. Dino-Lite USB microscopes can even be used as a standard webcam with applications such as MSN Messenger and Skype, a handy feature which allows remote users to collectively view and discuss the microscope output.

Watch the AM4113T Dino-Lite Pro in action

The Dino-Lite AM4113T is a professional digital microscope which provides 10x – 50x magnification with an additional 200x setting when the microscope is directly above the object being observed. A 1.3M pixel image sensor provides sharp, high resolution images with a large field of view. The AM4113T comes complete with DinoCapture software (or DinoXcope for Mac) which enables you to capture images and videos, annotate them and also use measurement features.

Watch high-res micro photography from the AM4113T

Other Dino-Lite Products

Entry level: AM2111

Ideal for educational use and Bioblitz events
640 x 480p resolution
10x – 70x and 200x magnification
Image capture software included

Advanced features: AM4815T Edge

20x – 220x magnification
Interchangeable end caps
Extended Dynamic Range and Extended Depth of Field
Polariser option available

For professional presentations: AM7013MT 5M pixel

5M pixel (up to 2595 x 1944p)
Magnification of up to 400x
Robust metal housing
Polariser option available

Unboxing the new AnaBat Express bat detector

Introducing the new AnaBat Express bat detector from Titley Scientific. Watch the unboxing video below, and read on for our quick guide to the key functionality.

AnaBat Express overview

Weatherproof bat detector for passive recording
Programmable recording schedule
Compact and discreet design
Integrated GPS receiver
One-touch unit configuration

Monitoring with the AnaBat Express

The AnaBat Express Bat Detector is an exciting new weatherproof detector that is designed to be rapidly deployed for recording bat calls for species identification or activity monitoring. Based on the AnaBat frequency division technology, it records calls in zero crossing format on to an SD card, ready for analysis with the free downloadable software (AnaBat Toolbox and AnalookW). Customised recording schedules can be programmed on to an SD card using a PC and then uploaded to the AnaBat Express using the card.

Features and components

The AnaBat Express has an integrated GPS receiver that automatically sets the clock, calculates sunset and sunrise times and records the location of the device. The unit also has a ‘one-touch’ configuration capability, where you can programme it to record automatically from sunset to sunrise every night (based on GPS coordinates) just from one touch of the ‘Mode’ button, without having to use a PC for configuration. It is camouflaged and compact, with a weatherproof box and omni-directional weatherproof microphone, and it can be used with the AnaBat Express five metre microphone extension cable so that you can position the microphone away from the unit.

Powered by 4 x AA batteries; the unit should record for around 14 nights on one set of batteries and up to 30 nights with high quality lithium batteries. Supplied with padded case, wrist strap, 4GB SDHC card, 4 x AA batteries, a magnet for status checking and USB cable.

Birding Challenge: ingenious birding-related inventions wanted!

Instructables is a “maker” site, where people can share their home-made creations – and how to build them – with other inventive types around the world. They have a new birding channel for all bird-related projects: equipment people have made or modified, projects for the back-garden birder, or sharing skills and insider tips on birding. To launch the channel they are running a competition.

So if you have any home-grown birding projects that you want to share, and you are interested in the chance to win some cracking prizes, check out the competition page for the Birding Challenge. The competition entry call-out is also for software tools or apps that can be used use in the field.

The organiser of the challenge is a UK birder resident in San Francisco, and of course this competition is open to people from anywhere in the world. It closes at 11:59pm August 28th PST, on the dot, so you have just over a week to get in the shed and start sketching out your winning design!

Getting started with the SM2BAT+ bat detector

The Wildlife Acoustics Song Meter SM2BAT+ is a passive ultrasound recorder that can be left out in the field for long periods of time to record ultrasound at frequencies of up to 192 kHz. The SM2BAT+ comes packaged in a plain green weatherproof box making it easy to position discretely without the need for expensive or time consuming efforts to weatherproof/camouflage it. Setting a bat detector up for passive monitoring can be a slightly daunting experience for the first time user so we have produced an annotated internal diagram (see below right – click the image to enlarge) and this blog post describing our experiences getting started with the SM2BAT+. Despite feeling a little scared at the sight of circuit boards I am pleased to report that I found the SM2BAT+ to be very user friendly – read on for our idiot’s guide to setting up an SM2BAT+.

Getting started

The first thing you will need to do is insert four D-Cell batteries into the slots. A number of variables affect battery life including the quality/type of the battery, temperature, and the recording mode. The manual produced by Wildlife Acoustics suggests that if high quality Alkaline D-Cells are used at 20^oC then you should get 130 hours recording time at 192 kHz mono and 100 hours recording time at 192 kHz stereo or 384 kHz mono when using in WAV mode and over 300 hours of recording time when using ZCA mode.

Next you will need to insert an SDHC card into one of the Flash Card Slots. Wildlife Acoustics recommend using good quality SDHC Class 4 or Class 6 cards and a single 32GB card should easily last a minimum of 2 weeks.

How to programme your SM2BAT+

Now it is time to programme your SM2BAT+. Setting up a simple schedule is very easy, switch the unit on by pressing the WAKE/EXIT button. Once it has woken up you will be able to see whether your SDHC card has been accepted and how much spare memory is available. To programme your unit press the SELECT button to see the menu; then to scroll through the menu options press the UP and DOWN buttons, press BACK to move back up a level, and press SELECT to move left and/or toggle through a list of options.

Below left shows a schematic (click to enlarge) of the Song Meter Main Menu and includes the settings I used for a trial run of the SM2BAT+. The first page of the menu includes three options – Schedule, Settings and Utilities. Setting the schedule could not be easier, press SELECT when the cursor is flashing next to Schedule, then press SELECT again, update the time using the UP and DOWN buttons then press SELECT again to keep moving to the left filling in the details as you go. You will see that I have set our SM2BAT+ to come on at 20:30 and record for 10 hours.

Press BACK to come out of the Schedule menu and then DOWN to move to Settings, then SELECT again to enter the Settings menu. For a quick test of the unit you will need to set the time and date using the UP, DOWN, SELECT, and BACK buttons as before. Finally select AUDIO to check the recording settings. In my test run I opted for a Sample rate of 384000 (384 kHz) because we have lesser horseshoe bats in the Totnes area. This is because the maximum frequency recorded is equal to half the sample rate – consequently, at a sample rate of 384 kHz the SM2BAT+ will record ultrasound at frequencies up to 192 kHz on one channel (perfect for lesser horseshoes that echolocate at around 110 kHz). If you want to use both channels (i.e. two microphones) you have to record at a maximum sample rate of 192 kHz. Although you may miss lesser horseshoe bats the big advantage of using both channels is that you can separate the microphones (using extension cables – available from NHBS) by up to 100m, effectively doubling the number of bat detectors you own for the price of a couple of cables. Alternatively you can separate the microphones by 10-20m to measure flight directionality along a linear feature.

Next you need to select which channel to record on. Under Channels I selected Mono-L to record from the left hand microphone input. For Compression I selected Off which means that the SM2BAT+ is in trigger mode and records individual WAV files for each trigger. Analook users may prefer to use the ZCA option which records individual ZCA files for each trigger. Alternatively, some users may prefer the WAC0 option which produces a continuous compressed WAC file for the duration of the recording period (actually the files are size limited so I found that 1hr 33min chunks are produced). That’s it… all you need to do now is take your SM2BAT+ to your field site.

Field set-up

Once at your field site check the settings and do a test recording. To do this plug some headphones into the headphone jack and start recording by pressing both the UP and DOWN buttons simultaneously. Once the recording has started press SELECT to view the channels and then make some ultrasound by eg. tapping your fingers and thumb together or rattling some keys. If all is well then put your unit back to sleep, seal the weatherproof enclosure (don’t forget to take a screwdriver with you) and plug your microphone in to the left hand microphone input (using your extension cable makes hiding the unit much easier). It is worth remembering that the indicator LED is visible when the lid is on so make sure this cannot be seen by passers-by.

Data analysis

Downloading the data is also easy – simply remove the SDHC card and place it into an SD card reader. To analyse the data I used Pettersson’s BatSound v4.12. My WAV files opened immediately and I used the Close, open, next button to scroll quickly through the files so the analysis was quick and painless. On my first night I recorded soprano pipistrelle and greater horseshoe bats in the centre of Totnes.

New: Carwardine’s Ultimate Wildlife Experiences – plus great backlist special offer

‘Ultimate Wildlife Experiences’ is the new book from Mark Carwardine: zoologist, conservationist, award-winning writer, TV and radio presenter, widely published wildlife photographer, best-selling author and columnist and wildlife tour leader. Carwardine’s last account of world wildlife travel – 2009’s Last Chance to See: In the Footsteps of Douglas Adams – found him teaming up with Stephen Fry to retrace the steps of Carwardine’s 1980 journey with Douglas Adams in search of some of the world’s most endangered animals.

His new book – with a foreword by Fry – is a product of his lifetime’s experience of wildlife encounters around the world and introduces 20 extraordinary adventures including catching sight of the rare spirit bears of Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest, navigating the hostile world of the Komodo dragon in Indonesia and finding favour with the curious and friendly Florida manatees.

Two of Carwardine’s classic marine wildlife guides are now available from NHBS at nearly half price:

On the Trail of the Whale

£4.99

was £9.95

The Shark Watcher’s Handbook

£9.99

was £16.99

The NHBS Batalogue 2012 – available now

The Batalogue is our annual catalogue of bat detectors and accessories for bat work and bat groups. There are hundreds of products and accessories to choose from, along with detailed specifications and comparison charts.

How to get the Batalogue

Option #1 Browse the Batalogue online

Option #2 Call (+44 (0) 1803 865913), or email us, for a free printed copy