* . *
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
Friday, June 6, 2025
Earth-News
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    9 things to do this weekend in Lake County plus a look ahead – Leesburg Daily Commercial

    Discover 9 Exciting Weekend Adventures in Lake County and What’s Coming Up!

    Shows to Watch – The Advocate

    Must-See Shows You Can’t Miss!

    Fox News Entertainment Newsletter: Celebrities mentioned during Diddy’s high-profile sex trafficking trial – Fox News

    Fox News Entertainment Newsletter: Celebrities mentioned during Diddy’s high-profile sex trafficking trial – Fox News

    ‘Sinners,’ starring Michael B. Jordan, is now streaming on Prime Video – About Amazon

    Experience the Thrills of ‘Sinners’ Starring Michael B. Jordan – Now Streaming on Prime Video!

    California Mid-State Fair announces entertainment lineups for Frontier and Mission stages – KSBY News

    Exciting Entertainment Lineup Unveiled for California Mid-State Fair’s Frontier and Mission Stages!

    Spotify & OpenAI: Will Gen AI ‘Hollow Out’ Entertainment? – Technology Magazine

    Will Generative AI Transform the Future of Entertainment

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Property Technology Magazine Unveils “PropTech Top 50 Index” and the “2025 PropTech Trends Report – The Great Rebuild.” – Business Wire

    Property Technology Magazine Unveils “PropTech Top 50 Index” and the “2025 PropTech Trends Report – The Great Rebuild.” – Business Wire

    Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) Stock Price Expected to Rise, UBS Group Analyst Says – MarketBeat

    UBS Analyst Predicts Surge in Micron Technology Stock Price!

    Domo to Participate in the D.A. Davidson Technology Summit – Business Wire

    Domo Set to Shine at the D.A. Davidson Technology Summit!

    When fiction becomes fact: 3 pieces of modern technology inspired by Star Trek – Redshirts Always Die

    From Screen to Reality: 3 Modern Technologies Inspired by Star Trek

    The Isfahan Center for Nuclear Technology – UCF, ZPP, and IRR10 – Alma Research and Education Center

    Exploring the Isfahan Center for Nuclear Technology: Innovations and Insights from UCF, ZPP, and IRR10

    Inside the tedious effort to tally AI’s energy appetite – MIT Technology Review

    Inside the tedious effort to tally AI’s energy appetite – MIT Technology Review

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    9 things to do this weekend in Lake County plus a look ahead – Leesburg Daily Commercial

    Discover 9 Exciting Weekend Adventures in Lake County and What’s Coming Up!

    Shows to Watch – The Advocate

    Must-See Shows You Can’t Miss!

    Fox News Entertainment Newsletter: Celebrities mentioned during Diddy’s high-profile sex trafficking trial – Fox News

    Fox News Entertainment Newsletter: Celebrities mentioned during Diddy’s high-profile sex trafficking trial – Fox News

    ‘Sinners,’ starring Michael B. Jordan, is now streaming on Prime Video – About Amazon

    Experience the Thrills of ‘Sinners’ Starring Michael B. Jordan – Now Streaming on Prime Video!

    California Mid-State Fair announces entertainment lineups for Frontier and Mission stages – KSBY News

    Exciting Entertainment Lineup Unveiled for California Mid-State Fair’s Frontier and Mission Stages!

    Spotify & OpenAI: Will Gen AI ‘Hollow Out’ Entertainment? – Technology Magazine

    Will Generative AI Transform the Future of Entertainment

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Property Technology Magazine Unveils “PropTech Top 50 Index” and the “2025 PropTech Trends Report – The Great Rebuild.” – Business Wire

    Property Technology Magazine Unveils “PropTech Top 50 Index” and the “2025 PropTech Trends Report – The Great Rebuild.” – Business Wire

    Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) Stock Price Expected to Rise, UBS Group Analyst Says – MarketBeat

    UBS Analyst Predicts Surge in Micron Technology Stock Price!

    Domo to Participate in the D.A. Davidson Technology Summit – Business Wire

    Domo Set to Shine at the D.A. Davidson Technology Summit!

    When fiction becomes fact: 3 pieces of modern technology inspired by Star Trek – Redshirts Always Die

    From Screen to Reality: 3 Modern Technologies Inspired by Star Trek

    The Isfahan Center for Nuclear Technology – UCF, ZPP, and IRR10 – Alma Research and Education Center

    Exploring the Isfahan Center for Nuclear Technology: Innovations and Insights from UCF, ZPP, and IRR10

    Inside the tedious effort to tally AI’s energy appetite – MIT Technology Review

    Inside the tedious effort to tally AI’s energy appetite – MIT Technology Review

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
Earth-News
No Result
View All Result
Home Science

Detect Migrating Birds With a Plastic Dish and a Cheap Microphone

July 5, 2024
in Science
Detect Migrating Birds With a Plastic Dish and a Cheap Microphone
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Birding is booming. You may realize your local nature spots are especially busy during seasonal migrations, when birds move between their summer and winter grounds. Species that you had been noticing disappear may have been replaced by ones that hadn’t been there before. Or you may have seen migrating birds on the wing—say, a flock of geese flying in their famous V-formation. Even if you’re not a dedicated birder, you’ve probably made such observations throughout your life. So it might come as a surprise to learn that you’ve been missing out on most of this action, which takes place at night. But, as I discovered, with some simple electronics and the right software, you can identify nocturnal migrators with ease!

Birds migrate at night for a few reasons. One is that it helps them to avoid predators. Also, it allows them to use the stars for navigation. A less obvious reason is that traveling at night helps these birds avoid heat stress. And the night air tends to be less turbulent, making flying easier.

These nighttime flights are largely invisible. If you’re lucky, you might view telltale silhouettes by training a telescope on the moon. But during the Second World War, scientists realized that they could readily detect migrating birds using radar. Since then, ornithologists’ radar studies, particularly those that use modern weather radar, have proved immensely successful in showing where and when birds migrate at night.

Radar echoes cannot, however, identify species. But there is another technique that can: recording the calls that birds make during their nocturnal travels.

An illustration of acoustic detection components.Incoming sounds are amplified using a parabolic dish made from a plastic bird-feeder cover [top]. A microphone attached at the focal point of the dish is connected to a preamplifier [middle left], which in turns feeds an external sound card [middle right], which connects to a host computer via USB. A large gel-acid battery [bottom] provides plenty of power for long-term monitoring. James Provost

When ornithologist Richard Graber and electrical engineer William Cochrane made the first systematic recordings of nocturnally migrating birds in 1957, they used a microphone attached to a 2-meter-wide upward-facing parabolic dish. But you can get by today with a far more modest setup.

You could, for example, reproduce the gear designed by Bill Evans. On his website he sells a microphone and preamp for this purpose along with guidance on how to package the equipment so that it will hold up to the elements. I explored a different approach, though, one that seemed easier and cheaper.

Evans’s preamp is designed to be insensitive to low frequencies, as these aren’t of interest when you’re recording bird calls. I figured that this feature wasn’t that important, so after testing a few inexpensive options for the microphone and preamplifier, I chose one on Amazon for just US $9.

This circuit uses the venerable NE5532, a low-noise, low-distortion dual op-amp design that’s been used in professional recording equipment since 1979. To make it directional, I unsoldered the condenser microphone from the board, attached a short length of audio cable to it, and mounted it at the focal point of an 8-inch-diameter parabolic dish—or, well, a reasonable approximation of a parabolic dish, as it’s actually a rain guard for bird feeders. You could also purchase a 16-inch-diameter one, but the 8-inch dish served me admirably.

I found the focal point of this dish through trial and error and ran the output of the preamp into an old Creative Labs Sound Blaster external sound card, which had been collecting dust on my shelf. I suspect that just about any external sound card would work fine for this application, including the $34 StarTac model that I use to good effect to monitor solar flares.

To power the preamp, I used a 7-ampere-hour, 12-volt gel-cell battery, which is overkill. But the big battery would allow me to leave the thing running for weeks at a time. Following Evans’s advice, I housed everything in a 2-gallon paint bucket, stretching some plastic wrap over the top to keep rain out.

I placed my bucket o’ electronics on the roof of my porch, running a USB cable from the sound card, out the side of the bucket, and into my office through a window. Then I plugged it into a Windows laptop onto which I had installed Raven Lite, acoustic-spectrogram software made available for free by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Using Raven Lite to compute spectrograms showed just how sensitive this arrangement is. I could easily view, for example, the effect of completely inaudible sounds created by rubbing my thumb and forefinger together a couple of meters away from the microphone.

With the gear in place outside, I started recording at night, beginning in early March, arranging the Raven Lite software to record a series of 1-hour sound files. The great thing about Raven Lite is that you can review hours of recordings just by scanning through spectrograms visually. Checking out a 1-hour-long sound file takes just a few minutes.

A chart plotting frequency against time, showing a 10-second-long surge of acoustic activity. This audiogram reveals the presence of bird calls. I uploaded the data to a server maintained by Cornell University that then uses AI to quickly identify the species. James Provost

These files, of course, picked up a lot of sounds: rumbling traffic, screeching cats, wailing sirens, and who knows what else. But once you’ve looked at spectrograms for a while, it becomes easy to pick out bird chirps. There is no shortage of local birds chirping during the day, but after sunset their ornithological cacophony abates, returning again some time before dawn.

The interval in between is where I went hunting for the sound of migrating birds. And after 10 days or so, I found my quarry: chirping that started shortly after midnight, rising in volume for a few minutes before fading away.

Using Audacity, a free audio editor, I extracted a few seconds of the loudest chirping and uploaded the file to Birdnet, where the good folks at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology provide a tool for identifying bird calls. It indicated that the species I had recorded was the killdeer, a type of bird found throughout the continental United States, some populations of which are migratory.

Additional nights of recording and scanning spectrograms turned up other sounds that appeared to be from other kinds of birds on the move, including such migratory species as the dark-eyed junco and Kentucky warbler.

I’ve never been an accomplished bird watcher: I’d be hard pressed to distinguish a sparrow from a wren. So it’s rather satisfying to discover that, with some simple electronics and the right software, I am able to pick out different species of migratory birds flying high overhead through the inky darkness of the night.

>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : IEEE – https://spectrum.ieee.org/detect-migrating-birds-with-sound

Tags: detectMigratingscience
Previous Post

Przewalski’s Horses Are Finally Returning to Their Natural Habitat

Next Post

Lauri Markkanen Trade Rumors: Kings ‘Were Close to a Deal’ amid Warriors, Spurs Buzz

Ecological Restoration Service Market to Reach USD 87.9 Bn by 2031, Growing at 9.4% CAGR – openPR.com

Ecological Restoration Service Market Set to Soar to $87.9 Billion by 2031 with a Robust 9.4% Growth Rate!

June 6, 2025
Boise State moves forward with plans for new science building, signaling an investment in STEM majors – The Arbiter | Boise State

Boise State Unveils Ambitious Plans for Cutting-Edge Science Building, Boosting STEM Education!

June 6, 2025
The Science Of De-Extinction Is Providing Hope For Nature’s Future – Forbes

Reviving the Past: How De-Extinction Science Offers New Hope for Our Planet’s Future

June 6, 2025
Cardi B Slams Offset For Allegedly Not Helping With Kids’ Six-Figure Lifestyle – HOT 97

Cardi B Calls Out Offset for Failing to Support Their Kids’ Luxurious Lifestyle!

June 6, 2025
Hollywood legend Tom Cruise becomes record holder for his fiery Mission Impossible stunt – Guinness World Records

Tom Cruise Sets the Bar High with Record-Breaking Fiery Stunt in Mission Impossible!

June 6, 2025
India could become third largest economy in the world this year: Borge Brende – MSN

India Poised to Become the World’s Third Largest Economy This Year!

June 6, 2025
9 things to do this weekend in Lake County plus a look ahead – Leesburg Daily Commercial

Discover 9 Exciting Weekend Adventures in Lake County and What’s Coming Up!

June 6, 2025
Property Technology Magazine Unveils “PropTech Top 50 Index” and the “2025 PropTech Trends Report – The Great Rebuild.” – Business Wire

Property Technology Magazine Unveils “PropTech Top 50 Index” and the “2025 PropTech Trends Report – The Great Rebuild.” – Business Wire

June 6, 2025
Graphics: China’s ecological, environmental quality keeps improving steadily – news.cgtn.com

Graphics: China’s ecological, environmental quality keeps improving steadily – news.cgtn.com

June 5, 2025
The Forgotten History (and Slippery Science) of Canola Oil – Eater

The Forgotten History (and Slippery Science) of Canola Oil – Eater

June 5, 2025

Categories

Archives

June 2025
MTWTFSS
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
30 
« May    
Earth-News.info

The Earth News is an independent English-language daily published Website from all around the World News

Browse by Category

  • Business (20,132)
  • Ecology (670)
  • Economy (684)
  • Entertainment (21,590)
  • General (15,267)
  • Health (9,725)
  • Lifestyle (687)
  • News (22,149)
  • People (685)
  • Politics (691)
  • Science (15,902)
  • Sports (21,187)
  • Technology (15,669)
  • World (669)

Recent News

Ecological Restoration Service Market to Reach USD 87.9 Bn by 2031, Growing at 9.4% CAGR – openPR.com

Ecological Restoration Service Market Set to Soar to $87.9 Billion by 2031 with a Robust 9.4% Growth Rate!

June 6, 2025
Boise State moves forward with plans for new science building, signaling an investment in STEM majors – The Arbiter | Boise State

Boise State Unveils Ambitious Plans for Cutting-Edge Science Building, Boosting STEM Education!

June 6, 2025
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

Go to mobile version