Hello All,
I see that Rich Peet has included me in a nice list of other lurkers, and
Randy decided t o come out into the open with a recording update, so who am
I to stay quiet? I have been recording a little, mostly during bird surveys,
but most of my time has been sucked up by the Burrowing Owl Project. Maybe I
can be forgiven for going off topic this once, since one of our release
sites is interesting right now. For the past several months I have been
trying to get some artificial burrows installed at a middle school near
Phoenix that have infrared video cameras. The school had one owl living in
a parking lot drain and they wanted to give it a better home. I agreed to do
that and suggested we make it four burrows because the Burrowing Owl is a
colony nester and more birds are better. We could use the school as a
release site for 4 more owls. They wondered if we could put in infrared
cameras so the students could see the birds in the burrows. I figured this
was a great project, so I built 4 aluminum burrows with removable camera
mounts. I also added motion sensors so we can know about owls moving through
the tubes, and temperature sensors in the burrows so we know how the burrow
comfort level varies during the summer (four feet under the ground). A week
ago we got the burrows installed, the release tent erected, and the four
owls released into the tent. The staff at the school brings mice to the tent
every day for a month. We got our first video of the owls in one of the
burrows two days ago, I put a short clip of this up on the project website.
You can find it by going to http://mirror-pole.com. It is in the Wild at
Heart section, look for the Paseo Verde School and infrared camera stuff.
The cameras have microphones built-in (real low quality stuff) but we don't
have any way to get at the sounds yet. The motion sensors and temp sensors
need a couple of interfaces built before I will be able to get the data on a
hard drive for the school's web page people to get at. Eventually there
will be streaming video of the owls in the burrows (in the dark of course)
with the sensor data available for all the see on the web. This is a great
way for the students at the school to have an owl laboratory for science
projects without disturbing the owls. I heard from the school yesterday that
the governor of Arizona was supposed to come to the school to see the owls
in the burrows and what the school was doing to creat a new kind of
educational resource. (I don't knoe yet if the governor made it). I have
been working hard trying to figure out ways to reverse the population
decline of the Burrowing Owl, having the governor involved would sure help.
The decline of the owl is due to development pressure that covers over the
holes the owls need. Also the mammals that dig the holes get wiped out so
new holes aren't being dug like in the past. All of us hear the pressure of
this development in our recordings. It is getting harder every day to find a
quiet spot or get away from airplanes. Education, and in many ways education
by listening to wildlife sound recordings, is the only way to get through
to the masses about the plight of wildlife worldwide due to land and sea
development. I always love to read about how sound recordings have been used
to restore a seabird colony or get a classroom of kids excited about
wider/wilder world around them. It is just not possible to know how
important sound recordings are today. Once a region gets changed, it may not
be possible to go get those recordings again later because the animals are
just, gone. I know how hard it is to put the genie back in the bottle,
because that is what I am trying to do, finding places to put holes where
there won't be more develoment, and educating kids about what a wonderful
animal a Burrowing Owl is so they won't hurt it. The owl, in turn, will
provide a way for them to learn about the process of science, if not do real
science. After all, we don't have much direct observation of owls under the
ground. When the owl goes under, what does he do? Does he even bother to go
to the burrow? Does he eat food down there, or just cache it away for later?
These are questions that classrooms of kids can answer. The same thing can
be done with micophones. Classrooms can have access to remote mic locations
so students can observe wildlife by hearing what they are doing, maybe they
can also see the bird with one of those cheap web cams. Would you rather
learn about doing science from a blackboard or from a real animal that you
directly observe? I think recordists can make a tremendous contribution in
this regard because young people aren't think about sounds and science and
development, but they should be.
Well I managed to get something on-list in after all. I hope you don't mind
me ranting on about the importance of figuring out valuable things you can
do with your recordings that benefit the animals making the sounds. I can go
back to lurking now.
Greg Clark
Visit http://mirror-pole.com for the latest Arizona bird field work
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