Confident bat identification
Recent advances in professional bat detectors have greatly improved the ease and scope of bat detecting for bat identification, surveys, echolocation research and remote recording. In order to confidently identify bat species on their echolocation alone has always required bat workers to record the calls from a bat detector for sound analysis on computer software. Until now this had meant carrying a detector plus some form of recording device and connection cables into the field.

Digital sound recording
Digital recording devices such as the Edirol R-09 are now widely available. They are compact, have low battery consumption and they do not require lots of tapes or discs for recording for long periods. The tiny memory cards that they can record to have huge capacities and can store many hours worth of bat calls at a time. But there is still the issue of carrying an additional piece of equipment, its cables and batteries when out bat detecting.

Record to built-in CF
Bat detector manufacturers have now combined compact digital recording with the latest bat detection technology to produce all-in-one professional detectors. The Pettersson D1000X has a heterodyne mode for initial real-time identification plus frequency division and time expansion modes for choice in recordings suitable sound analysis. The detector records the signals straight to a built-in CF card recorder, doing away with the need for recording equipment in addition to your bat detector. Popular UK-based bat detector manufacturers Batbox Ltd have also recently brought out a detector with built-in CF recording - he Batbox Griffin.