Nature at Night

Reconnecting people with the natural night through nature experiences, educational programs, and community initiatives.

Our Goal

As cities expand and technology accelerates, our connection to the natural world—especially the natural night—is fading. We often forget that for most of human history, people experienced the night through sound, darkness, and the subtle cues of the natural world. Artificial light disrupts these rhythms, harming ecosystems and distancing us from the sensory experiences that once grounded us. By helping people engage with nature at night—listening to nocturnal wildlife, feeling shifts in temperature, and navigating by starlight—we can rekindle an appreciation for darkness and inspire healthier lighting choices that support both the environment and our own well-being.

The Nature at Night program reconnects communities with the natural night through immersive, multisensory experiences, educational activities, and community initiatives. By bringing the nighttime landscape to life through sound, touch, and other senses, the program helps people rediscover their roots and appreciate our long-standing relationship with the natural world. This deeper connection encourages environmental stewardship and the adoption of responsible lighting practices that honor both nature and our shared heritage.

Our Projects

Nocturnal Flight Calls

The Nature at Night: Nocturnal Flight Calls program—part of the Lights Out Heartland initiative led by DarkSky Missouri—uses listening stations to record the nighttime calls of migrating birds traveling along the Mississippi Flyway. These migrations occur while most people are asleep, but specialized equipment captures the sounds of birds moving north in spring and south in fall, supporting public awareness and contributing valuable data to citizen‑science efforts focused on nocturnal wildlife.

Listening stations operate at several St. Louis–area sites, including Shaw Nature Reserve, Jefferson College Observatory, Tower Grove Park, and Audubon Riverlands, with additional locations added when volunteers are available.

Volunteers from DarkSky Missouri, St. Louis Audubon, and multiple Missouri Master Naturalist chapters help run the program by establishing listening stations, deploying and monitoring recording devices, analyzing calls with tools such as Audacity and NightHawk AI, and sharing results with Lights Out Heartland partners and conservation groups for education and outreach.

Bat Echo-Locations

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 Goggles, participants can also see bats in flight. The combination of these two technologies can make nature come alive at night.

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

K-12 Schools

DarkSky Missouri is already working with the Mehlville School District in St. Louis to help students use various tools and techniques to learn about nature at night and components of light. This program would add a new dimension of sound to their project.

Launch of this program is conditional upon obtaining more acoustic listening devices.

More About Nature at Night

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.

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 a reasonable price. We are also learning from Indiana Audubon Society's work about the use of 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.