Here is the clip from Countryfile yesterday (Sunday 19/4) that features some of the Eastern Moors Partnership team (including me) chatting about deploying, recovering and analysing Acoustic Recording Units (ARUs).
I’ve popped the clip on. Maybe the ©️ police will take it down ?
That clip was focussed on ARUs listening for owls. I went back out tonight (without the TV crew – much quicker) and positioned another two ARUs which will listen for Nightjar. These birds are incredible at camouflage and oftentimes when i’m out in the dark i hear them calling.
Here’s a self-filmed clip from tonight of me positioning one …
The positioning of the devices is part science, part previous knowledge and part guess. The sweaty back of me in the second clip (from tonight) is because the 3 metre square i had to put the ARU in earlier was in a complete b*stard of a place through a fallen tree covered swamp 🥵. It was however utterly teeming with birdlife 🥰.
Use the MerlinBird app to listen and learn about what birds are out and about on your walks. I can highly recommend a dusk in to dark o’ clock walk in any open green space, fields or countryside with the app on in your pocket.
If you’ve never heard their call, Nightjar is the first bird on the Cosmo Sheldrake album ‘Wake Up Calls’.