In today’s world, our connection with nature is weakening as cities grow and technology advances. One thing we often miss is how much nature relies on natural night. Artificial lights mess up this balance, but many people don’t realize the harm it causes to ecosystems. By helping people reconnect with nature, especially at night, we can show them why darkness is important and encourage better lighting habits. This not only helps the environment but also improves our own well-being.

The ‘Nature at Night’ program aims to reconnect people with the natural night through nature experiences, educational activities, and community initiatives. By making nature “come alive” at night, we hope to cultivate a deep appreciation for the importance of natural night, encouraging environmental stewardship and well-being through the adoption of responsible lighting practices.

Program Overview

While most of us are asleep in the heartland USA, millions of birds are flying overhead, migrating north in the spring and south in the fall. Missouri is part of the “Mississippi Flyway,” one of the busiest bird migration routes in the world. Birds prefer to fly at night to avoid predators and often navigate using the Moon, stars, and night sky. Even if we can’t see them or aren’t awake when they fly overhead, technology can capture their nocturnal flight calls.

Partners of “Lights Out Heartland,” a multi-state effort to protect migrating birds at night, are launching a pilot program in the St. Louis metro area to capture these amazing sounds of birds migrating. The program, called “Nature at Night: Nocturnal Flight Calls,” will establish listening stations to capture the calls of birds flying south for the winter. Our project launch will focus on the month of September, a peak period of bird migration through St. Louis. The data collected will be used for citizen science and to raise public awareness about these incredible journeys. If successful, we plan to expand the program to other regions in the Lights Out Heartland network.

Program Locations

Multiple listening stations in the metro St. Louis area are planned to obtain a good sampling of nocturnal bird calls. Subject to approvals, the following listening stations are planned for our program launch with the list continuing to grow:

• Metro North: 
  • Audubon Riverlands
• Metro Downtown:
  • Bellefontaine Cemetary
  • Gateway Arch National Park
  • Tower Grove Park
  • SugarWitch (rooftop)
• Metro South:
  • Jefferson College Observatory
  • Shaw Nature Reserve.

Program Volunteers

Volunteers from DarkSky Missouri, the St. Louis Audubon Society, Missouri Master Naturalist – Great Rivers Chapter, Missouri Master Naturalist – Miramiguoa Chapter, and Missouri Master Naturalist - Confluence Chapter have been recruited for the project with more volunteers being planned.

The role of volunteers will be as follows:

1. Orientation: Learn about the program, How to deploy the listening devices, and how to capture/ analyze the nocturnal flight calls.
2. Establish listening station: Partner with conservation personnel area and building owners to identify and establish suitable listening stations.
3. Capture data: Place and monitor listening devices to capture the sounds of birds migrating.
4. Analyze data: Utilize software such Audacity, Wildlife Acoustics Kaleidoscope, Merlin ID and NightHawk AI to identify species of birds.
5. Use data: Once analyzed, the data will be submitted to eBird for citizen science, shared with the St. Louis Audubon Society for use in its BirdSafeSTL program which tracks bird fatalities from building collision during migration, and shared with Lights Out Heartland Partners and conservation groups for use in public outreach programs. 

Program Overview

The availability of tools for use in public outreach programs held at night is always a challenge.

The "Nature at Night: Bat Flight Echo-Location Calls" project will pilot the use of a Wildlife Acoustics Echo Meter Touch 2 Pro to display the echo location calls of bats in flight. The technology can interactively display the spectrograph of a bat echo-call and identify the bat species. Paired with Night Vision Googles, participants can also see bats in flight.  The combination of these two technologies can make nature come alive at night.

Program Locations:

Until grants are obtained, this program is currently limited to the metro St. Louis area.

Program Overview:

While conservation areas are often aware that nature is busy at night, they might not know the extent, timing, and location of nature at night.  The Nature at Night Project teams can deploy multiple devices in a targeted area to capture nature sounds during the night.  Through analysis, they can determine the timing and general locations of owls, bats, frogs, and more.  This data can provide exciting talking points for various outreach programs during the day and provide the foundation for more targeted nature hikes at night.

Program Locations:

We have sufficient quantity of AudioMoths to expand this program conservation groups within Missouri and to targeted groups within our Lights Out Heartland partner network.

 Technology

“Nature at Night” is supported by a wide range of technology that can accommodate our project goals: 

• AudioMoth (18 devices) - The Audiomoth is a low-cost acoustic device that is widely used for monitoring biodiversity.  3D cases for the AudioMoth were printed for more permanent use of these devices.

• Wildlife Acoustics Song Meter (1 device) - Purchased from the Indiana Audubon Society, this device has more capabilities than the AudioMoth which allows our project team to evaluate and compare various audio capturing technology.

• Wildlife Acoustics Echo Meter Touch 2 Pro (1 device) - Purchased from Wildlife Acoustics, this device can be plugged into a mobile device to identify the echo calls of bats in flight.  These calls can be captured “live” in the field with the bat species identified on screen and bat echo locations displayed in a spectrograph.

• Night Vision Googles (1 device) - Night Vision Googles provides an inexpensive tool to use infrared technology to view nature at night including bats in flight, owls in trees, etc. 

 In addition to the “hardware” being used, our volunteers will be experimenting with various software to analyze the sounds:

• Audacity - Free open-source audio editor and recording software

• Kaleidoscope from Wildlife Acoustics - A bioacoustics sound analysis tool.

• Nighthawk - A machine learning model for acoustic monitoring of nocturnal bird migration

• MerlinID - Free bird ID app from Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

• E-Bird - A project of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Acknowledgements

Our Nocturnal Flight Call project would not be possible without the generous donation of equipment and expertise from a variety of institutions.

• The Eclipse Soundscapes Project, led by ARISA lab and supported by NASA Science Activation under NASA award No. 80NSSC21M0008, generously donated eighteen AudioMoths to our project.

• Indiana Audubon Society inspired us with their "Echos of the Night Sky" project and provided a “used” Wildlife Acoustics SM4 unit to us at reasonable price. We are also learning from Indiana Audubon Society’s work about the use if artificial intelligence to more quickly and accurately identify species of migrating birds.

• SciStarter.org for their support of Citizen Science and the Eclipse Soundscapes Project. It was through SciStarter that we were introduced to the use of acoustic listening devices to capture the sounds of nature.