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discussion / Acoustics  / 23 December 2020

Audiomoth and Natterjack Monitoring (UK)

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Is anyone aware of anything that has been published, or anyone who is using Audiomoth (or similar) to monitor Natterjack toad calling at night? Or using it to monitor any night-time calling amphibian population?

I'm aware it's probably as easy as just putting out the recorder and picking it up the next morning, but I'd be really interested to hear about people's real world experiences of doing this! 



Ryan Ruttan
@RyanRuttan
Drone Operator and Tech Developer
Commenter level 2
Conversation starter level 2

23 December 2020 9:40pm

Hi Sarah,

Great question, I've found an article on building a sound monitor that records to a microSD card. The project has a lot of errors in it but I'm hoping to try building it with the help of a few other arduino people and publish our own project, here's the one I'm looking at:

https://www.instructables.com/Make-Your-Own-Spy-Bug-Arduino-Voice-Recorder/

I've ordered the parts and i'll let you know how it goes. Basically it records any time it hears a sound and doesn't have the brains to set it to certain animal calls. It's kind of a shotgun approach to the problem.

Harold Tay
@htarold
Worked as a mechanical engineer for a defence co, then software engineer, then for a research lab specialising in underwater robotics.
WILDLABS Research Participant
Commenter level 3
Conversation starter level 1

24 December 2020 4:09pm

Happy Christmas,

I designed and built the recorders on an amphibian recording project in Sabah Malaysia, so this sort of thing is definitely done.  I'll get my colleague whose project it is to chime in if you're interested.

In broad strokes, the recorders are programmed to record 1 minute in every 10, but you could programme them to do that only at night in your case.  Usually they're left there for a few weeks or until the battery runs out, because there's little point picking them up before the SD card is filled.  The Sabah site was considered hospitable, so there was little equipment damage.

This project has been interrupted due to the pandemic but otherwise is intended to run in the long term, as one of the objectives is to monitor species migration against climate change.

Regarding the recorder, it was designed to record in stereo, in the hope that individuals could be picked out to aid in the population count estimate.  Another possible use is background noise reduction or intoducing directionality.  Most recorders do mono only so these options are not available.

I'm working on the mark II now.  This one will retain the stereo option and add other options like GPS and networking as they come on line.  I'm going to try a different manufacturing/distributing model which is partly DIY (some simple soldering involved) in order to get the tech to scale down (for individuals) as well as up (for e.g. NGOs, charitable organisations).  I'll keep you in the loop if you're interested.

Thanks,

-harold [email protected]