About Bio-acoustics
An Introduction by Anthony Walker, CEO, Scarecrow Bio-Acoustic Systems Ltd

The initial, pioneering, designs leading to the digital storage of bird distress calls date back to early 1984; the UK's London Gatwick Airport sought a simple alternative to using tape recordings because the electromechanical systems were unreliable, could be misused and had, on occasion, failed at a critical time.

The solution was to 'computer chip' the sounds by digitising, a technique we had originally pioneered for automatic emergency announcements related to 'voice alarm' building evacuation systems.

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The Initial DIGISCARE system proved very successful and, in 1991, the design was upgraded to SCARECROW by the Group that continues to develop it, Scarecrow Bio-Acoustic Systems Limited, a privately owned UK Company.

In digitising, all unwanted sounds are edited out, leaving 'clean' bird calls with further advantages:-

All calls start at a natural beginning, an achievement of major financial investment and the ongoing research of specialist ornithological and biological experts.
All calls are instantly available from their beginning.
All calls are simply pre-selected by turn of a knob or touching a screen.
As digital systems have no mechanical parts to wear out, fail or service, our systems have been operationally proven to have at least 25,000 hours between service need, equivalent to an average 5 years of use. Cost of ownership is therefore very low.