Bats 1.wav

Bats recorded along the Lagan River near Belfast in September 2019. This recording was originally made at 192 kHz but the registered sample rate has been changed to 16 kHz in order to make their ultrasonic calls audible in playback. This is equivalent to slowing playback to 1/12 normal speed.

In this excerpt you can hear social calls (the trills at 0:00, 0:19, 0:29, 0:35, 0:41 and 0:52), soprano pipistrelle echolocation (the higher pitched chirps) and common pipistrelle echolocation (the lower pitched chirps).

'Social calls' are bat-to-bat communication as opposed to navigation-focussed utterances. As this was recorded in the Autumn the likelihood is that these social calls were made by males with the intention of impressing a female mate.

Recorded on a Sony PCM D100 using Knowles ultrasonic mics. Noise reduction has been applied.