The sci-fi world of high tech devices such as night vision goggles, thermal imaging readers, and portable radar systems is finding a new and unusual application – helping to save the Black-capped Petrel, an endangered bird so rare and reclusive that conservationists have a hard time even figuring out where its nesting areas are. Its known nesting range on Hispaniola in the Caribbean, its nocturnal habits, and the strange sounds it sometimes makes have conjured devilish associations, and provided it with its local name, “Diablotin,” or Little Devil.
By using cutting-edge technology — portable radar systems and thermal imaging devices — researchers were recently able to produce pictures of 150 individuals in a span of only four hours, in an area where only four or five individuals had previously been identified, and then only by the sound of their calls.
“The novel application of this technology allowed us to discover new breeding sites of these birds recently on Hispaniola. We investigated a site where we had previously heard only a handful of individuals, and were amazed at how many birds were actually there,” said Dr. Jessica Hardesty Norris, Seabird Program Director for American Bird Conservancy, and co-author of the recently produced conservation plan to protect the species.
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