Get started with BatCallsDVD
Learning to recognize bat calls is a daunting task. Bat calls from any particular species are not "cookie cutter" shaped, but can be somewhat variable across sequences. Your ability to organize calls to species is directly related to how much time you spend becoming familiar with all the calls a species may utter. And after staring at hundreds of calls, it's great to have a handy resource to refresh your memory and compare your own reference calls to. We spent hundreds of hours collecting calls from hand-released, light tagged, and ziplined bats. Hundreds of hours have been spent recording free-flying bats in the wild. And many more hours have been spent grouping all these calls to species. We can now pass this data onto other parties who may very quickly become familiar with our Northeast bat calls and start forming their own personal call library.

This is a collection of bat calls recorded directly into a laptop using a Pettersson 240x and the SonoBat software or an Iriver digital recorder. Recordings were made from 2004 to the present. We include hundreds of calls from common species, including handfuls of calls from threatened and endangered animals. In all, over 2.5 gigabytes of data are here sorted to species,and/or include descriptive notes.

Call analysis can be a subjective art that is only as good as the observer. Only by spending the time reviewing hundreds of calls will the unusual ones really stand out. While BatCalls forms an excellent base for a call library, users are encouraged to collect their own calls from bats they personally identify, as this is the best way to evolve the learning.

Roadmap of the night
This is a collection of our best bat calls recorded directly into a laptop or Iriver digital recorder using a Pettersson 240x and the SonoBat software from 2004 to the present. The calls were recorded in Pennsylvania, New York, Iowa, West Virginia, New Hampshire, Arizona, and Kentucky.

Package contents
The library is organized by location and then bat species. There are two kinds of files on the disk; positive calls, and field examples.

Positive Calls are obtained after a bat was positively identified in the hand. The recording was made after the bat was hand released, light tagged, or ziplined. Some reference calls obtained in this fashion may not be representative of a naturally free-flying bat. All bats were individually identified by John Chenger, recognized by the USFWS as a certified Indiana bat consultant. Each file represents about 5 representative calls over a single sequence as compiled using the SonoBat Reference Call Compiler utility. Each file contains notes as to how the recording was obtained and what environment the animal was in. Also included is a bonus pack of full Indiana bat sequences recorded in Iowa and New York, 36 sequences in all.

Field Examples were recorded at a survey station with little or no disturbance nearby. While the animal was never seen by an observer, the calls were later analyzed and grouped to species based on the best available references. These calls are representative of what would actually be recorded in the field, with the drawback being the species ID can be close to, but not 100% positive. Field examples are actual recordings from some of our selected summer mist net projects. They are time expanded call sequences up to 17 seconds long. They contain between 5 to 15 individual calls exactly as recorded when the animal passed by the detector. These sequences have been sorted to species and provide the user with plenty of examples of what to expect. In addition, some files were recorded in front of well known roosts as bats swarmed or emerged, providing representive calls that we can assume to be big brown or grey bats.