Identifing bats in flight

If you see a bat there are various ways you can go about trying to work out what species it is:

• Flight pattern and characteristics – You can tell a lot about a bat from how it flies, its size and where you see it. No equipment required, just eyes, and possibly ears!
• The rhythm of the bats Echolocation – If you have a Heterodyne bat detector, you can listen in to the calls it makes as it uses echolocation to find it’s way around.
• The sounds the bat makes – With a Time expansion bat detector you can hear the actual noise that the bat is making. If the sound is slowed down (time expanded) 16 times, the sound you hear will be exactly 4 octaves lower than the bat produced.
• Looking at the “shape” of the bats calls – With a full spectrum ultrasound microphone connected to a screen, you can see a moving graph of the bats calls over time. The frequencies and shapes of the calls are distinctive, weather it be “hockey sticks”, “staples” or others.
• Automated Bat ID – On more expensive technology, software analyses what it hears in real time and has a “best guess” at the species. However this can have false results and can be quite slow. So that with some experience a surveyor will probably have identified the bat, faster and with greater accuracy that the AutoID.

Click the links above for more details about each