Nocturnal Symphony: a Bat Detector's Journal by J. A. Watson

Author:J. A. Watson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JUVENILE FICTION / Animals / Nocturnal JUVENILE FICTION / Nature & the Natural World / General JUVENILE FICTION / Humorous Stories
Publisher: North Star Editions
Published: 2019-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

Echo Series D Meets the BatWrong –5000

We did it! We got a bat recording. It’s only 23 seconds long, and it took us about seventeen tries, but we got it! Not to brag, but actually, I got it. Although admittedly I had an unfair advantage. While TK kept trying to get Mr. Pinter’s old and broken Echo Series D to work, I whipped out the homemade heterodyne that Ginger and I had built. Apparently my soldering skills are solid.

But I have to give TK some credit. He had the excellent idea of approaching the mine from the other side, over by Decker Woods. That way, we could have a chance to record different species of bats. The ones from the mine are probably just too far away for our equipment. But everybody in Ingotville has seen bats flying out of those woods at dusk. I read that silver-haired bats are one of the most common tree bats in Wisconsin. So that’s what I’m expecting. Laura would be happy to hear that we might have eastern reds here. That is, she would if I were speaking to her, which I’m not.

We also had to figure out the problem of how to record. These heterodyne detectors don’t have recorders in them. Mom came up with a pretty brilliant solution while she, TK, and I were eating dinner at Fish & Chips before we went detecting. She suggested we use my phone recorder app.

At first, stupid me, I thought she meant to just hold the phone up to the bats instead of the detector. “That won’t work,” I said. “The sounds are ultrasonic, so we’d need a special microphone.”

“Actually, we could,” said TK, dipping a hunk of haddock into mustard sauce. “Turns out there are bat detector apps.”

“What? And you didn’t tell me?”

With his mouth full, he said, “The apps are free, but you have to buy like two hundred dollars’ worth of equipment to make the apps do anything. Didn’t think that was worth mentioning, given our situation.”

“If I may continue explaining my idea?” Mom continued. “I meant that you could use your regular memo recorder on your phone to record the sound that comes out of the speakers on the detector. Because the detector has the correct kind of mic, right?”

“Right,” I said. I hate it when she’s right.

“That would totally work,” said TK. “Thanks, Ms. Farrell!”

And it did work, at least on the machine Ginger helped me build. Mr. Pinter’s is a hopeless case. At first I ended up with a bunch of two-second bursts of hissing and blips. (I notice a lot of those get posted on bat detector sites, but I think that’s lame.) But then I got this one long, 23-second recording. We might just be getting the hang of this.

Tomorrow we’ll try to find out what type of bat we recorded. Right now, I’m too sleepy.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.