Mourning dovePETER WALLACK, WIKIMEDIABird habitats are often in hard-to-reach terrain, making it difficult for ornithologists to collect data from these areas. Drones could help solve this problem, according to a February 15 study conducted by researchers at Gettysburg College and published in The Auk.
The authors write that the “ground-based or close-to-ground recorders” that ornithologists currently use to record birdsongs are limited by observer bias and an “underrepresentation of core habitats, areas of steep terrain, wetlands, or others areas that are dangerous, time-consuming, or difficult to access.” Not only are these areas hard to reach, but “sometimes traversing terrain can disturb the birds and stop them from singing,” Andy Wilson, an environmental studies professor at Gettysburg College told TechCrunch.
Drones, on the other hand, can easily access these sites. Wilson and colleagues demonstrated this by tying lightweight audio recorders to drones with 8-meter-long fishing lines (to suspend the microphone far enough to mask noise from the drones). Then, they left the drones to hover in a spot nearby the ...
