Sound recordings: echolocation & courtship calls of bats

You can now document observations by recording sounds. That's an exciting possibility for echolocation calls as well as mating calls of epauletted fruit bats. Currently, you have to upload your recording to SoundCloud, and then add the recording to the observation on iNat.

Please follow these steps when adding a sound to an observation:

1. Sign up for a SoundCloud account at www.soundcloud.com
2. Link your iNaturalist account to SoundCloud. There is a link to connect to SoundCloud under "Your profile" => "Edit your your profile". If you are not linked to SoundCloud, you will be prompted to link to SoundCloud when you add a sound to an observation.
3. Record a sound in the field.
4. Add an observation with location and date (preferably also with time). Click on “Add sounds” in the upper right hand corner.
5. You should see a list of your sounds on SoundCloud. Click on the box next to your sound recording, and then “Save observation” at the bottom of the page.

Remember, you can post sounds in addition to photographs or based on sounds alone. I've added new observation fields (recording method, time expansion factor and bat detector model), which should be used as essential background information when sharing echolocation calls.

Posted on September 7, 2013 08:38 PM by jakob