New Must Have Book For UK Readers! British Bat Calls

An awesome new book will be shipping soon. It will be of particular interest to bat enthusiasts in the UK:

British Bat Calls
A Guide to Species Identification
Jon Russ

185 pages, colour illustrations, distribution maps.

Pelagic Publishing

...How I wish such a book existed for American bats! *sigh*
You Folks in the UK are very lucky (in more ways than one!)...

You may pre-order the book, from NHBS via the link below:

Great New Bat Blog From Germany

Fledermaus!

I'd like to share a really nice bat detector page I just "discovered" - The author of the blog, Johann Schilling, was nice enough to include a link to my blog on it : )

http://fledermausruf.blogspot.de/

(It's in German, but can be easily translated with Web-based tools if need be (Babel Fish, etc.)

I strongly urge you to visit, and have a look around! - There are some incredibly informative links about bat detecting there! (many of which, are in English).

Happy bat detecting!

Pettersson D240X Review In The Next WSRS Journal

For those who are interested, or who are already Members - Just FYI: 

The Spring 2012 edition of the WSRS Journal 'Wildlife Sound' 

Coming very soon for WSRS Members!

It will feature a slightly different version, of my review of The D240X.

Link to The WSRS  Website

Devices Used For Recording Orthoptera (Singing Insects)

In addition to detecting bats: I occasionally do enjoy detecting, and attempting to identify Orthopetra (various singing insects). I'm going to try to keep this post as brief as possible. I simply want to share the results of tests I've done; using a few different bat detectors, etc.
For those who are also interested in singing insects, there are two books that I can highly recommend:
The first is 'Guide To Night-Singing Insects Of The Northeast' by John Himmelman.
The second, is called 'The Songs Of Insects' by Lang Elliot and Wil Hershberger. They both cover the Orthoptera of the Northeastern United States.
In the US, they may be found just about anywhere books are sold.

For Readers in the UK & Europe who are interested, they may be purchased from NHBS, by clicking on the links below:

The second book, is the one I used for my testing: I used recordings from the (included) audio CD; limiting my focus to the songs of insects that happened to be in the sub-audible range. I suppose they may also be described as "near-ultrasonic". In other words, tracks that I had a bit of trouble hearing with the naked ear. I find the whole subject rather fascinating. Here are the track numbers used, along with the insect names:

#25 Short-Winged Meadow Katydid
#26 Slender Meadow Katydid
#27 Woodland Meadow Katydid
#28 Saltmarsh Meadow Katydid

So, the tests were really simple: Did the device or bat detector used "hear" the recording or not?

---------------------------Below, are the devices - Along with the results-----------------------------------

  Olympus DS-30    ZoomH2     BatBox Baton    Wildlife Acoustics' EM3       BatBox Griffin

#25         No               No                 Yes                         Yes                             Yes
#26         No               No                 Yes                         Yes                             Yes
#27         No               No                 Yes                         Yes                             Yes
#28         No               No                 Yes                         Yes                             Yes

Well, that's really about it - I'll gauge the interest in this subject/post, and if it is "popular" then I may do the same test with a couple of other bat detectors, etc.

Happy bat (and bug) detecting!