Sound Technology for Sustainable Farming 

Recording the sounds produced by species in a landscape (known as soundscaping) is an important tool in ecological research. We can measure the sound space occupied by wild species, domestic species and by human activity and can measure the relative contribution of each source to the overall soundscape. Recording a soundscape can generate a lot of data and to process that data you need some tools to help you extract meaningful metrics from the sound. You can also search for patterns of sounds within a soundscape, and move to identify the species that have made the sounds. For example in Brazilian open landscapes a nocturnal species that can thrive in good quality habitat is the Little Nightjar (Setopagis parvula).





This small nocturnal bird feeds on insects and hunts from sandy tracks or from branches, all found in abundance in modern agricultural settings.The presence and density of nightjars in a farm landscape has been shown to correlate with insect abundance and rank vegetation structure (Pople et al 2003). High populations of nightjars could indicate good quality habitats and their calls should be found in soundscapes.

 


To find out if Little Nightjars are present at a site you can examine a Little Nightjar call sequence and process it through Kaleidoscope software to extract key parameters: For example, call frequency, call duration, maximum and minimum frequency, plus many other metrics. Each call can be analysed for over 100 parameters that combine to for an unique signature for this species.




Using these parameters you can then scan all of your soundscapes recorded over many sites and many nights and automatically detect the Little Nightjar calls.  This method of surveying for cryptic nocturnal species has immense power and is one method driving forward the future of bird surveying practice in working agricultural landscapes.

You can listen to the call of the  Little Nightjar here.