Birds by Starlight: Tracking Nocturnal Flight Calls Using Open Source Software
We all know that Canada Geese migrate. They’re up there, honking away, going somewhere in spring, and then back again in autumn. But what most people don’t know is that all of the cool birds - Cape May Warblers, Semipalmated Sandpipers, Gray-cheeked Thrushes, you name it - also migrate. They do this at night, and they give a lot of little traffic updates to their friends: “Beep beep, I’m over here, don’t hit me.”
In this talk, I’ll talk about how scientists across the world are using Nocturnal Flight Call monitoring stations to listen in on these little tweeters. I’ll talk about how I set up my monitoring stations, and how I both use and write open source software to find, identify, and ultimately record migrating birds for Science™.
And yes, I’ve recorded several species of seagulls.
