Gallery: Bat Video Monitoring

A fascinating thing about bats is how difficult they are to study. Generally, we can't hear them or see them. Nonetheless they efficiently go about their business consuming enormous amounts of insects, pollinating flowers hundreds of miles from their day roosts that countless other animals depend on, and disperse seeds further than most any other bird or mammal. Besides bat detectors and bat acoustic monitoring, there are other methods where technology aids in our observations of these incredible animals. Most popular are the Sony NighShot and Canon equivalent cameras which can record near-infrared light, just beyond what humans (and bats, we believe) can see. These cameras require special illuminators, preferably ones designed for videography, NOT spotlights intended for law enforcement. Other devices are useful for certain kinds of surveys, such as borescopes, industrial security cameras, beam-break counters, and of course heat sensitive thermal infrared cameras. Below are some examples of camera setups BCM has used on real surveys.