Infrared search

For my learned fellows, Can an infrared camera or scope see a night flying bird over head or would there not be enough heat radiating off it's feathers to create a heat signature? I was reading something about peregrines migrating at night and since harvest numbers are calculated by peregrine counts at hawk watch stations to some degree and if they weren't seen at night, the counts would not be a fair count. I was thinking they could be counted if they can be seen. Maybe just lights aimed from the ground would work. I hear waterfowl passing over my place in the fall but can't see them unless they pass between me and the moon and most do not.

https://youtu.be/pcDR07-1DXQ

I wonder what device they were using for the imaging? It didn't say or I missed it.

Not sure I just remember seeing the video once when I was watching hog hunting at night videos on YouTube. I guess it was on there because of it being IR.

My friend and I had wondered if we could use IR for locating grouse in winter. I think they are so well insulated, that it really wouldn't work as well as my friend thinks. Figure only heat being released would be at head, and butthole, neither showing much!

Tom,

I know high end night vision equipment can see birds in flight at night. Not IR based, just visible light at very low levels highly amplified.
Most IR based night vision systems use what amounts to an IR searchlight to illuminate the field.

Regards,
Thomas of the Dim Vision

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Originally Posted by Falconer54

My friend and I had wondered if we could use IR for locating grouse in winter. I think they are so well insulated, that it really wouldn't work as well as my friend thinks. Figure only heat being released would be at head, and butthole, neither showing much!

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I know of people using it to find jack rabbits.

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Originally Posted by Captain Gizmo

Tom,

I know high end night vision equipment can see birds in flight at night. Not IR based, just visible light at very low levels highly amplified.
Most IR based night vision systems use what amounts to an IR searchlight to illuminate the field.

Regards,
Thomas of the Dim Vision

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Tom,

Would that be a Starlight Scope like we used in Viet Nam?

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Originally Posted by Falconer54

My friend and I had wondered if we could use IR for locating grouse in winter. I think they are so well insulated, that it really wouldn't work as well as my friend thinks. Figure only heat being released would be at head, and butthole, neither showing much!

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Nothing is that well insulated. You will still see a temperature difference between the animal and the background temps, especially in cold conditions. Actually, in most cases something with very good insulation will stand out more because an animal with poor insulation will be bleeding off heat.

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Originally Posted by goshawkr

Nothing is that well insulated. You will still see a temperature difference between the animal and the background temps, especially in cold conditions. Actually, in most cases something with very good insulation will stand out more because an animal with poor insulation will be bleeding off heat.

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Despite the temptation to argue with Geoff just to see where it goes I have to say I agree.

We carry hand held thermal imaging cameras on our fire apparatus that are intended to see where hot spots are in side walls, etc.
When we get calls for missing people we use them in the woods. A decent TIC can show you a wide range of temperatures.
You are really just looking for areas that are warmer than the surroundings and even a few degrees will show up reasonably well.

The leading company in thermal imaging is FLIR. They make cameras for the fire depts, industrial and military ones. They even have one that
will plug into an Android or iOS phone.

Thermal imaging is used quite a bit now for wildlife work. Sage-grouse at leks can be counted more accurately, and lots of other applications. Some of these include counting animals in dense forest and verifying fawns next to a mother elk or sheep.

The attached image is of a sage-grouse lek, in spring without snow, and there is still a strong thermal signature.

But most of the cameras used are high-end, definitely not hand-held models.

Attachment 9352

Perfect, wonder how much one would cost, that could be attached to a drone?

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Originally Posted by Tom Smith

Tom,

Would that be a Starlight Scope like we used in Viet Nam?

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A starlight scope like you dreamed of in Vietnam.
The technology has made progress.
The capability/price ratio has improved.

Regards,
Thomas of the Desert

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Originally Posted by Falconer54

Perfect, wonder how much one would cost, that could be attached to a drone?

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A flir for a phone is $2-500 depending on the version. Something for longer range and a theoretical drone mount that would be useful will run into the $10’s of thousands.

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Originally Posted by JRedig

A flir for a phone is $2-500 depending on the version. Something for longer range and a theoretical drone mount that would be useful will run into the $10’s of thousands.

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The technology is getting cheaper by the year. In a few years you will be able to get the
performance of those $10K cameras for $2K and maybe less.

We can now get thermal cameras built into our SCBA's so there is one less thing to drag into a fire

Science is still cool. :)

The responses above regarding technology improvements I think are spot on. Just as with calculators and laptops, tremendous improvements with prices dropping at the same time.

But to Tom's original question we are not quite there yet. Two issues on which I would speculate would be the width of the sensor "beam" and how to correctly discriminate peregrines from other birds in the sky at night.

Maybe the first ways to adapt technologies for night-time bird counts will come from retired military components. There is a fairly active transfer now from the military to wildlife uses, mostly to universities.

Thanks John,

I think you are right about the width of coverage in order to be an accurate count of birds over head. And I think it would difficult to ID deferent bird species from one another.

Best regards

What about those migrating peregrine spotting areas, don't they have records of earliest and latest sightings of day?

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Originally Posted by falconrydope

What about those migrating peregrine spotting areas, don't they have records of earliest and latest sightings of day?

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Ron, it has been established that peregrines do migrate are night. (from a birding blog website) The question is: how many? Since migrating peregrine numbers are used to establish the peregrine harvest numbers in states permitting a passage harvest it is important to know how many more are passing the hawk watch stations, unseen.

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Originally Posted by Captain Gizmo

A starlight scope like you dreamed of in Vietnam.
The technology has made progress.
The capability/price ratio has improved.

Regards,
Thomas of the Desert

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Thomas,

What do mean "dreamed of" I thought they were pretty good.

My lost birds moved at night, more than once.

Now I understand why you want to know haw many passed unseen!