Mobile phones for owl tracking

Researchers at MIT are using mobile phones to help count owls in forests. Professor Eben Goodale and his colleagues placed tricked-out cell phones in various parts of a forest. When Goodale dials the owls' numbers, the mobile phones play owl calls from their speakers and record the responses. From The Telegraph:

One use has been to track great horned owls in Louisiana and their effects on local swallow tailed kite populations. In the new study, they show that Barred Owls and the Eastern screech owl are also happy to take a call on the mobile.

Traditionally, bird surveys rely on people standing in the woods, playing a CD of bird calls, and taking note of the birds they hear responding. It can be labour intensive and inexact.

The researchers now plan to compare a survey conducted with 65 phones with one that relies on CD recordings used by 250 volunteers from the Audubon Society in Maine to see if the mobiles do as well. The advantage is that the new method allows ornithologists to dial up birds anywhere on the planet, and to cover a large area at the same time.

Link to The Telegraph, Link to Owl Project.

Comments

#1 posted by Jeff Kramer

, August 28, 2007 10:20 AM:

Cell phones? O Rly?

#2 posted by Anonymous , August 28, 2007 10:42 AM:

just wanted to try out the comment fearure ... feels good

#3 posted by Anonymous , August 28, 2007 10:44 AM:

not related to this post but is anyone else having a problem with the feeds? i can't get them to work.

#4 posted by Casey Sorrow

, August 28, 2007 10:56 AM:

YA RLY

#5 posted by Astrochicken

, August 28, 2007 11:07 AM:

no wai

#6 posted by Anonymous , August 28, 2007 11:16 AM:

I think you'll find that the owl in the photo is neither a Barred Owl, nor an Eastern Screech Owl.

It's a Eurasian Eagle Owl -- an enormous species native to Europe. Its pumpkin-orange eyes are unique to the species.

Very cool story, though.

#7 posted by fatrobot

, August 28, 2007 11:40 AM:

who? get it... owl... hoo...
i'n funny

#8 posted by Hello Fitchburg

, August 28, 2007 12:31 PM:

And to think, for years I've been using owls to help count mobile phones.

#9 posted by Anonymous , August 28, 2007 12:37 PM:

"The advantage is that the new method allows ornithologists to dial up birds anywhere on the planet"

Nonsense, unless they're using satellite phones ... and even those things aren't universal. This sounds fine for doing survey work in relatively developed areas.

#10 posted by Theo

, August 28, 2007 2:22 PM:

I wonder if there have been any similar projects in installation art...this sounds very cool and seems like it would be very interesting for "human tracking" as well.

#11 posted by brundlefly

, August 28, 2007 2:55 PM:

This is nothing. I've been texting for tufted titmice for years.