Phil Atkin
@ramoneskaraoke
I write software and design electronics and 3D prints to enable people on tiny budgets to hear and record the extraordinary sounds of bats. Big fan of wildlife, of records with prominent guitars and snappy snares, and every second of the 1970s.
LOVELY little toad in the woods yesterday, and a cracking illustration of the colour sensitivity differences between iPhone SE 2 and iPhone 16e. And I’ve already warmed up the SE photo.
Do you have an iPhone? The latest Bat Synth (now referred to as “Bat Signal” and I trust there will not be a cease and desist from DC comics) plugs into a phone and needs an iPhone-only app , but is much better than the original. And it lets you program your own bats.
So, this moth - Dewick's Plusia - was just in our kitchen. According to this (www.ukmoths.org.uk/species/macd...) it's EXTREMELY rare. If so, cool! I let it out because everything that comes in is dying very quickly of dehydration in this weather.
Here's foxy chowing down on the vole dinner - you can see him do the gulp / swallow.
A long walk around the village a) to escape the dissonances of the church bells next door and b) because it was a lovely evening. Two foxes, one of them just 50 yards from the farmer who was baling up the hay. Foxy was vacuuming up the voles. Middle picture - vole in jaws.
Mullein Moth caterpillar today. Lesser Stag Beetle and Thick-Legged Flower Beetle yesterday. And suddenly, tons of Meadow Brown butterfiles.
TINY pipistrelle nano - this is my new favourite thing I've ever designed. 10 minute build time, £10 build cost, operates as handheld bat detector or 384kHz USB microphone. Single red LED responds to ultrasound, component list rationalized. This prototype has no on-off switch, real devices do.
Frothy coffee at the Donkey Sanctuary. They are intended to be donkey ears but for me they will always be Brown Long Eared Bats.
Here's the naturalist team at the Reni Pani Jungle Lodge just outside the Satpura Tiger reserve, with their collection of pipistrelle / pippyg detectors. The 5 pippygs are recording echolocation calls to populate the @btobirds.bsky.social BTO Acoustic Pipeline's "Bats In India" project. @batcon.org
Quite the walk round the village, and I didn't even turn on Merlin until we were 20 minutes in.
Here's the same moment (pretty much) as it happened - the live FFTs are nothing like as clear as the "after the fact" Kaleidoscope ones - and on a device as powerful as the iPad I really should throw more effort at the FFT visual quality. Sometime in the next few months :)
Excellent batting last night - here's a simultaneous common pip, noctule and serotine. Captured on an ancient iPad plus a sub-£10 DIY ultrasonic microphone.
I don't often turn on Merlin on a round the village walk, but I'm glad I did today - it heard a Skylark that we missed. But it missed Ravens, Pheasants and the first Swifts of the year. They weren't screaming or anything, but heck - Swifts - it just should have known.
It’s the South West Bat Conference today, and Andy Avery is leading a workshop called “How to lead a Build your own Bat Detector workshop”. Meta or what? With more workshop leaders the self build bat detector movement could be on a roll after this, which would be GREAT! @batconservation.bsky.social
Popped outside for 5 minutes, Soprano and Common Pipistrelles out and about.
I keep a Griff in my wallet all the time for exactly these "I really need a bat detector" moments. Of course I still need to remember to keep my wallet in my pocket ...
It would be really to see a live one for a change. 3 Great Crested Newts since we moved to the area, all dead on the road. It's nice to know they are around, but honestly, a live one would be GREAT.
Yesterday evening's bat highlights. The Serotine is definite despite the sub-90 percentage from the pipeline, the "Bechsteins" I will put down as "noisy Myotis recording". The Natterer's really sounds like a Natterer's, nothing like the other bats - ultra-short, ultra-sweepy calls.
Plus, great harmonics, and they are real - at this quiet level no way are they distortion artifacts :)
2nd March and glory be, Barbastelle AT THE FRONT DOOR! AGAIN!!! Plus first Serotine of the year, what looked at first glance like a Brown Long-Eared - getting these off to the BTO pipeline right now. @batconservation.bsky.social
Something caught my eye in "The Flood" on the road to Oaksey. Dead Pike, of all things, and the first Pike I've ever seen. So apparently the giant puddle is now successfully connected to a real waterway.