I'm working on a project looking at seabird bioacoustics in Svalbard this August. We're hoping to capture diel activity patterns in Atlantic puffins, Little auks, and Black-legged kittiwakes under constant daylight conditions at their breeding colonies. Similar to this study on Little auks in Greenland. We'd aim to measure things like relative sound intensity (within colonies, not comparing between) to try get an idea of how colony activity changes throughout the day. Possibly also try counting individual calls if they're clear enough on the recordings.

 

We're currently in the process of accumulating recording devices for this. I was considering using AudioMoths and wanted to see if anyone here has experience using them in similar conditions (I've only ever used them for recording at very close range from within shearwater nests, never for wider soundscape recording).

 

We'd be setting them up about 30-50m away from the colonies themselves, about 50cm off the ground with windshields. I'm hoping to get 72hrs of continuous recording from each one, recording at 48kHz. 

 

I was wondering if anyone knows whether this is realistic. In terms of whether they'd be able to pick up colony sounds from 30-50m, and whether they would be able to run non-stop for 72hrs (also considering having them run only part time, e.g. 1 minute every 5 minutes). I'm aware that cold can reduce battery life. Any recommendations for good batteries would be greatly appreciated. We're expecting temperatures of about 1-7°C and probably strong wind. I was thinking of just using the in-built microphone, rather than any external ones, to save battery.

 

Thanks for any help you can give! If anyone has other suggestions besides AudioMoths I would also love to hear those - we're trying to stay budget friendly but it's important we get robust data so if AudioMoths are not great for this then please do share.

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

One thing to mention is that we would need to transport any devices and batteries by plane. So lithium batteries might be tricky? Although I think Lithium AA types should be fine.