Equipment – Page 12 – Hoopoe

UK’s first ever Deaf-led bat walk

As part of their Heritage Ability project, Living Options Devon recently hosted the UK’s first ever Deaf-led bat walk at the Love Parks event, in Cockington Park, Devon.

NHBS are delighted to have been able to loan them an Echo Meter Touch bat detector from Wildlife Acoustics, which allowed the attendants to view live sonograms on an iPad – whilst receiving further information in British Sign Language from the guide, Alasdair Grant.

This fantastic event was part of a whole day of activities helping to make heritage sites more accessible for disabled and Deaf people.

Alasdair, Deaf Alumni Programme Manager for Deaf Unity, who is working towards his bat license, led an inspiring bat walk which one participant said was “a memorable and unique experience”. The walk included watching soprano pipistrelles and lesser horseshoe bats exiting their roosts in outbuildings in Cockington Court, and common pipstrelles, serotine and noctule bats feeding in the park and lakes area.

The walk provided a unique opportunity for Deaf people to see and learn more about the lifestyle of our British bats and how to identify different species using bat detectors with visual sonograms rather than by sound. The Echo Meter Touch connects to an iPad to provide an excellent and very accessible visual display of bat calls in real time.

Living Options and Deaf Unity very much hope to run further bat walks in the future and would be delighted to advise other organisations and bat groups on how to lead bat walks for Deaf people.

The Heritage Ability Project supports heritage sites in South West England to improve accessibility for disabled people. Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the project is currently piloting different approaches with partner sites including museums, country parks, nature reserves and historic houses.

Best bat detectors for bat walks

Echo Meter Touch

This tiny ultrasound module connects directly to your Apple device and lets you listen to bat calls in real time as well as viewing a live sonogram on your screen. Ideal for bat walk leaders, the Echo Meter Touch provides you with plenty of real time information to share with your group, as well as letting you record and classify calls so you can provide a later update of all species heard during the walk.

Elekon Batscanner

The Batscanner is one of the simplest bat detectors on the market – simply turn it on and listen. The device will automatically tune to the frequency of the bat call nearby and will display this frequency on the LCD screen whilst playing the sound back at an audible level.

SSF Bat2

The SSF Bat2 cleverly scans all frequencies simultaneously and will jump to the peak (loudest) frequency at the touch of a button. Pre-programme up to four fixed frequencies and view a small spectrogram of the received call. Ideal for beginner or seasoned bat walkers.

Magenta Bat 4 and 5

The Magenta Bat 4 and Magenta Bat 5 are our most popular detectors for beginners. Affordable to buy and simple to use, they convert the call produced by the bat into a sound which is easily heard through the speaker. Simply tune to the required frequency using the large dial on the front of the unit. The Bat 5 also has a digital display which makes tuning the detector even easier.

EFE & GB Nets becomes part of NHBS

EFE & GB Nets has been manufacturing marine and freshwater survey nets and entomological survey equipment in the UK since 1974 and is renowned for the quality and durability of its products. On May 17th, NHBS acquired EFE & GB Nets and began the process of transferring the workshop from Lostwithiel in Cornwall to our new facility alongside our warehouse in Totnes. Production will resume in the next few days and everyone at NHBS is extremely excited about the opportunities that expanding into manufacturing brings.

Bernard Mercer, founder and chairman of NHBS said: “we are delighted and honoured to be the new owner of EFE & GB Nets, which has been supplying great products to conservationists for over 40 years. We aim to maintain the excellent design and manufacturing standards for which EFE & GB Nets is known; and also hope to develop innovative new products that meet the needs of the conservation community, both in the UK and internationally.”

As well as the complete range of marine, freshwater and entomological survey equipment produced by EFE & GB Nets, we are also very happy to undertake bespoke design projects, including entirely new nets and other equipment. Please contact our products team at equipment@nhbs.com to discuss your ideas.

Preparations underway in the new EFE & GB Nets manufacturing unit.

Recording Orthoptera using a bat detector

The Great Green Bush Cricket is the largest of the UK Bush Crickets. This beautiful image of a female cricket was taken by Charlie Jackson, from Flickr Creative Commons (CC by 2.0).

The order Orthoptera consists of the grasshoppers and crickets. Although most suited to warmer climates where they are incredibly diverse, in Britain we have 27 native species, as well as a number of non-native, naturalised species. From a very young age we are aware of these beautiful creatures as the sounds they produce fill our countryside with noise.

The characteristic Orthoptera song or “stridulation” is produced either by rubbing the wings together (observed in most of the grasshoppers) or by rubbing a hind leg against a wing (a method used by most crickets). The sound produced is an important part of the courtship ritual and is also used for other types of communication. As the sound created by different species varies significantly, studying these calls is an excellent way of surveying Orthoptera, and is helpful for finding individuals which can then be identified visually.

Stridulation produces a sound which covers a variety of frequencies – the sound made by grasshoppers is usually audible, but many species of cricket produce a higher ultrasonic frequency which cannot be heard by most humans. The use of a bat detector to listen to these higher frequency songs is an excellent way to listen to those species that we would not ordinarily be able to hear, such as the Speckled Bush Cricket. It also allows us to increase the range at which we can hear the audible ones. Bat detectors are also of use to older surveyors, whose ability to hear higher frequencies has naturally declined.

A simple heterodyne detector is perfect for listening to grasshoppers and crickets – one such as the Magenta Bat 4 or the Batbox IIID is ideal as it allows you to tune it to a specific frequency (as opposed to some of the more “intelligent” detectors which will alter it for you). The detector should be set to a frequency of 35-40kHz then all you need to do is sweep it around in different directions until you pick up your subject. It is best to stand in one place while surveying as the noise produced by your footsteps and clothes moving will produce background ultrasound noise which can confuse what you are hearing. The best days for surveying are warm and sunny; crickets are generally crepuscular (active during twilight) whilst grasshoppers are usually active throughout the day.

Unlike bat detecting, where the peak frequency is a key diagnostic feature for determining species, this information is less important for Opthoptera. Of more importance is the pattern and type of sound produced. The Environmental Records Centre of Cornwall and Scilly has a great guide to identifying Orthoptera including a useful information sheet on the use of bat detectors. They also have a collection of sound files of grasshoppers and crickets that you can use to recognise the typical calls produced by many of the species found in Britain.

Why not take along a leaflet or book to aid your identification: The FSC guide to British Grasshoppers and Allied Insects is a handy fold out guide with a useful key. For those looking for a more in depth guide, try the Photographic Guide to the Grasshoppers and Crickets of Britain and Ireland or the Pocket Guide to the Grasshoppers, Crickets and Allied Insects of Britain and Ireland.

Want to know more? Visit the website of the Grasshoppers and Related Insects Recording Scheme of Britain and Ireland where you will find lots of information and can submit your survey results. Or why not download the iRecord Grasshoppers app which is available for iPhone and Android devices.

BugDorm: Insect survey and rearing equipment

BugDorm have been supplying equipment for entomological research and teaching since they were established in 1995. Their products have become firm favourites with both professional and amateur entomologists and they are continually being developed to address the challenges encountered by field and lab workers everywhere. NHBS is proud to be a distributor of the BugDorm range.

Bugdorms — BugDorm Cages and Tents are available in a range of styles and sizes

For breeding and rearing insects, the BugDorm range of cages and tents offer a solution for every situation. Available in a wide range of sizes and mesh apertures, most have both entrance sleeves and zippered doors for convenient access. All pack flat for storage and transport. For rearing and studying insects in situ, insect rearing sleeves and bags allow you to contain leaves and branches within a temporary enclosure.

For field sampling, BugDorm offer malaise and migration traps, berlese funnels, emergence traps and bait traps. The ez-malaise and ez-migration traps use shock-corded poles to create a frame to which the net is clipped making them quick and easy to assemble. The ez-migration trap is cleverly designed with two collection areas, each with their own collecting bottle so that flight direction can be determined.

The innovative Slam Traps work on the same principle as the malaise traps, but can also be strung in a vertical chain to sample at different heights in the canopy. When used with the bottom collector (available separately), they will also collect insects such as beetles, that drop when they hit the trap. A four-headed version allows you to study migration patterns by collecting insects entering each of the four quadrants into separate collecting bottles.

The BugDorm range of insect net sets let you create your own net from a selection of frames, bags and handles. Net frames are collapsible and handles are telescopic with the longest options extending up to 530cm in length; ideal for sampling in the canopy.

Browse the full range of BugDorm products on the NHBS website.

Supplier interview: Volker Runkel of ecoObs

ecoObs are a small German company at the forefront of full spectrum bat call recording and identification. They produce the Batcorder 3, a highly optimised bat detector (each new microphone arrives with its own calibration factor to ensure that comparisons between units are valid) designed to consistently record bat calls of sufficiently high quality to make auto-identification possible. Calls can then be processed using ecoObs software bcAdmin 3.0, bcAnalyse 2.0 and batIdent. These enable the rapid and accurate identification of common bat species, speeding up the identification process by up to 70% and allowing users to focus more time on rare or interesting bat species. We asked ecoObs co-founder and managing director Volker Runkel to introduce the company.

Tell us a little about your company and how you got started

For my PhD thesis I developed a quite basic and rather well working solution for passive monitoring of bats. Already then I saw that automation in data collection as well as analysis was one of the keys to focus on, instead of all raw analysis work. We quickly realized there is a huge demand for such a solution. We then were lucky and found an engineer who partnered up with us and redesigned the hardware so it was power efficient, small and easy to use. The batcorder system was born.

What challenges do you face as a company in the ecology/natural history sector?

The sector is rather small and as a hardware producer we for example often have problems acquiring small quantities of parts. In electro-engineering small companies still require some hundred thousand parts while we ask for a mere thousand. Also the demand for devices is highly seasonal – 90% of orders arrive within a few weeks in spring when the bat season starts. On the other end, we have a very vivid and heterogeneous bat worker scene.

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

I think getting the batcorder and the analysis software out in the wild and thus pushing the whole field of passive monitoring and automated bat call identification to where it is now. When we started in 2004 no one believed it would be ever working, and now a rising number of devices and software exists.

What is your most memorable wildlife/natural history encounter?

Spotting and touching an Echidna in the wild!

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