Discover how BatSense combines AI and human validation to streamline bat acoustic surveys and monitoring.
Ever wondered what’s flying over your site once the sun goes down?
Bats are protected, elusive and notoriously difficult to survey effectively. The presentation below provides a tour of BatSense on the Wilder Sensing platform, with a deep dive into BatSense.
You’ll see how Wilder Sensing analyses and validates passively recorded bat data, get hardware set-up tips from Paul Howden-Leach of Wildlife Acoustics and finish with insights from the data uncovered at this year’s BBC Springwatch site in Crom.
Want to take your monitoring to the next level but not sure where to start? Read on…
This event is part of a webinar series delivered by the Biological Recording Company and Wilder Sensing with support from Wildlife Acoustics and Wildcare.
Q&A with George Caterer
With an MSci in Zoology from UCL, George began his career as an ecological consultant, managing surveys and delivering biodiversity net gain outcomes for protected wildlife across the UK. Now as Head of Business Development at Wilder Sensing, George brings together practical experience in UK wildlife conservation with a strong commercial skillset to help clients make the most of bioacoustic surveying, using it to meet their sustainability goals more efficiently.
Is BatSense designed to complement bat transect surveys or replace them?
100% complement. By coupling year-long BatSense monitoring with transect surveys, ecologists could potentially reduce the need for 5 or 6 visits to just 2 or 3. Using both in-person survey transects and acoustic monitoring gives you the best of both worlds.
Similarly, you could use this to cover a big landscape, find the important sites and manage your human workload. Rather than you having to spend all your time doing low-quality repeat surveys to identify sites of importance, we can take some of that work off you and have a great dataset to base your high-quality human work on. Static data gives you different data than you’d get from a human doing the monitoring.
What is the current advice on storing data locally versus sending data over radio links, especially with regards to battery life?
It’s case by case. If you have a mobile connection on site, we can stream audio and image files to the cloud. It comes at a SIM cost, so this isn’t going to be appropriate for every survey. In other cases, battery and SD cards work, and with the right Wildlife Acoustics kit those visits can be as long as every 4-6 weeks.
Can this tool be applied across wider Europe?
Yes, we do work on mainland Europe. Our training data sets work well across Western Europe, but the further east we go, the harder it is to get the training data we need to reach high confidence levels.
Q&A with Olivia Walker
Olivia holds a BSc (Hons) in Wildlife Biology from Manchester Metropolitan University and an MSc in Biodiversity and Conservation from the University of Leeds. During her MSc she completed a research project on the biodiversity of bat species across urban to rural gradients in Leeds, which sparked her interest in working with bats. She is particularly interested in ecological research and has spent time in Kenya carrying out animal behavioural studies.
Olivia was previously employed as a GIS Technician and also spent three years with the Environment Agency as a Regulatory Officer specialising in the regulation of large Food & Drink industries across Yorkshire.
Since joining Wilder Sensing in June 2026 as a Bat Specialist, Olivia has been involved as the human in the loop in the verification of bat echolocation calls.
Do you validate species presence/absence or the abundance of each species?
We are essentially validating the species list. So we know at least 1 call is accurate for each species we are stating are present. For rarer/less frequent species like Barbestelle’s, we may look at a higher percentage of calls, whereas we don’t need to do this for Pipistrelle’s at all – the platform is ~98% accurate for these so if a few % of a 1000 pip calls are incorrect, it makes very little difference.
How reliable is BatSense at distinguishing between Myotis species?
Expert validation has the platform at 98% accurate, with human validation there to pick up the slack. While it can try to differentiate Myotis to species, we present the data to genus only as there is lots of evidence to show that this is currently not easily achievable without field observation. If ever in doubt, we will drop to genus, rather than present incorrect species. This reinforces the need to use acoustic monitoring alongside transect surveys undertaken by a bat ecologist.
Does the analysis pick up more than one species when multiple species call within the same sound clip?
Yes, it does. Validation shows the platform has a much higher rate of picking up overlapped calls than other tools. We also have the opportunity of adding in additional species not found by the model during human-mediated analysis afterwards.
Q&A with Paul Howden-Leach
Paul Howden-Leach is an ecological consultant and bioacoustics specialist with over 25 years’ experience in ecological survey and monitoring. He has extensive experience in bat bioacoustics, including ultrasonic detector deployment, passive acoustic monitoring, call identification and acoustic data analysis.
Paul works with Wildlife Acoustics and has particular expertise in applying tools such as Kaleidoscope Pro to the analysis and interpretation of large-scale acoustic datasets. His work also extends to acoustic monitoring of birds and other wildlife, with a focus on developing practical applications of emerging bioacoustic technologies for ecological assessment and conservation.
Isn’t ambient noise also a factor when considering the signal-to-noise ratio?
Yes, definitely. The recording unit itself produces background noise, similar to the hiss of a cassette tape. Fortunately, there are relatively few sources of ambient noise in the ultrasonic frequency range. The main sources of interference are electric fences, occasional insects and weather stations.
Can these devices be place close to water?
I’d recommend that bioacoustic recorders are positioned at least one meter above the water’s surface.
Useful links
- Wilder Sensing: https://wildersensing.com/
- Sign up for the Wilder Sensing e-newsletter: https://2e428x.share-eu1.hsforms.com/2XxP8d_6lRSmBIKH7uwruXQ
- Wild Sensing and BBC Spring Watch: https://wildersensing.com/bbc-springwatch-again/ and https://wildersensing.com/bioacoustics-on-bbc-springwatch-what-happened/
- Contact: info@wildersensing.com
- Wildlife Acoustics: https://www.wildlifeacoustics.com/
- Echo Meter Touch 2 Giveaway: https://landingpages.wildlifeacoustics.com/2026-wilder-sensing-emt-2-giveaway
- Wildcare: https://www.wildcare.co.uk/
- Wildcare Newsletter Signup (get £5 off your first order): https://www.wildcare.co.uk/signup
- Song Meter range: https://www.wildcare.co.uk/brands/wildlife-acoustics.html?species=63651
- A604 Pro Thermal Imaging Monocular: https://www.wildcare.co.uk/pixfra-arc-a604-thermal-imaging-monocular-4mm.html
- BatSense: https://wildersensing.com/services/bats/
- BirdSense: https://wildersensing.com/services/birds/
- MothSense: https://wildersensing.com/services/moths/
- WildSense: https://wildersensing.com/services/wilder-sense/
- Wildlife Acoustics Upcoming Webinar – ‘Listening to Africa: Bioacoustics, Biodiversity & the Future of Conservation’: https://www.wildlifeacoustics.com/resources/training-courses/upcoming-webinars
- Wildlife Acoustics Grant Programme: https://www.wildlifeacoustics.com/grant-program
Wilder Sensing ecoTECH blogs
BatSense: What Remote Acoustic Monitoring Reveals After Dark
How Can We Use Sound to Measure Biodiversity?
Can Passive Acoustic Monitoring of Birds Replace Site Surveys?
The Wilder Sensing Guide to Mastering Bioacoustic Bird Surveys
Bioacoustics for Regenerative Agriculture
AI-powered Bioacoustics with BirdNET
Making the Most of Bird Sounds
Event partners
The Wilder Sensing webinar and blog series is produced by the Biological Recording Company in partnership with Wilder Sensing, with sponsorship from Wildlife Acoustics and Wildcare.
Learn to identify birds by sound
Learn how to identify birds based on their calls in our Bird Acoustic ID training webinar series (all webinars just £12.50 each).
- Garden Birds (Thursday 28 January 2027)
- Woodland Birds (Tuesday 30 March 2027)
- Farmland Birds (Tuesday 18 May 2027)
