The local town here has a murder of many 1000’s of crows that come into the town to roost every night in the winter. There are too many to give a good estimate and I am sure many towns have more. They are impressive when they show up when it is almost dark. The center of the area they stay in is a small one acre park with three 4 lane streets all around. The busiest intersect around.
So one night I had to see what they looked like roosting. Pulled into the factory right next to them and took out my FT03S. The instant the light hit the first tree 100’s of crows took off. As I scanned the other trees it looked like every single bird was in the air. They came back in a minute or two. It was amazing.
I do not condone harassing or shining any animals with flashlights. It never occurred to me the light would scare them at all because there is steady traffic within 30 feet of the trees. Also, there are two flagpoles with bright lights shining right up into the trees. They are terrified of the light. I did go back another night to make sure it wasn’t a one off and got the same results.
It sounds like they roost near lights to protect them from owls. They are killing most of the trees in the area.
Yes, ive had many similar experiences with my Imalent r90ts, my amutorch dm90 and my chinese 1w blue laser. I like taking part in a sport called (rabbit) lamping/spotlighting. The aim is to use high powered flashlights to locate and hunt animals which are usually nocturnal like rabbits and foxes. It works because the animals eyes glow like reflectors. Some animals react differently than others when being hit by the beam. Some will be stunned and will sit tight without moving because they are blinded. At this point you can fire at the area between the glowing eyes or deploy a fast lurcher-style running dog to chase or catch your prey. Some animals however will just spook or disperse.
Now regarding what you said about the crows, I had a serious magpie problem where the birds break into the chicken coop and eat my eggs. I tried installing cd’s hanging on ropes on my chicken coop but to no major effect. Then I had the idea to use my laser pointer to scare them away, and it worked. The magpies instantly fled. I was also able to go lamping/spotlighting for wood pigeons which are plentiful around here. My assistant would scare them with the laser and sometimes if I kept the hotspot of my DM90 on them for long enough they have no idea where they are going and are forced to land. It looks like a drone running out of battery. Then my dog could easily retrieve them while on the ground.
Anyway enough ranting on about the pigeons and magpies! Another final thing I would like to mention is more experienced people taking part in the sport spotlighting or lamping have told me that a flashlight with any kind of floody beam is useless for blinding the rabbits as “it shows the rabbit its way home” and a pencil beam is actually preferred. Although personally I was able to catch rabbits with my dog and the imalent R90ts which has a much wider beam, although not a dedicated flooder lights up the entire field instead of one small circle. I personally find it much easier to see the rabbits with a wider beam. How much truth is behind the floody beam being bad, that I do not know. These people used a weak incendescent light in the 1970s and 80’s and flashlight technology has come a long way.
I was at a friend’s wedding and instead of driving there and especially back all at once, went to a convenient beachside motel for the day of. When I got there after the reception (a bit after midnight), I decided to hit the beach with my UV S2+ to try to find any fluorescent rox. Also took some other lights to play with out in the middle of nowhere, where it was nice and dark.
What I found is that when I’d scan the water with a decently powerful beam, swarms of fish would almost jump out of the water and make the surface look as if torrential rain or even hail was hitting the water. After a few seconds, it’d subside. Scan a different area of the water, and same dealy, swarms breaking the surface, then subsiding.
Yes, I have a small wood adjacent to my house and I’d gone out with my TS11 to have a look at the next field… OK, I’d gone out with my TS11 to play with it.
As soon as I switched it on and shone it into the field everything with feathers exploded out of the trees, off the flooded bit I was looking at and seemingly out of thin air with a tremendous ruckus.
If I shine my light at the local river all of the Canadian Geese will take off from the water. I do wonder what instinct makes them react to a light-source like that. Maybe they’ve developed instincts to avoid cars, planes, and boats.
I don’t typically shine my light at them if I notice them.
Yeah, it totally confuses them. At night, the fish are in a different operating mode compared to day. When you suddenly flood them with light, they immediately react. Probably for feeling vulnerable. And in fact, if larger fish are nearby, they’ll dart up into the fray and gobble up startled fish. When I used to scuba dive at night, one reminder we were always given by the dive master–don’t shine your lights on small fish swimming in front of you, as they become easy prey for larger fish. And while I was good about that, I couldn’t help notice a few times some larger fish paralleling me, saying just outside the spill of my flashlight. They immediately saw the advantage and were just waiting for me to startle/stun a small fish for them to devour!
Those larger fish paralleling you to me sound like a very similar role to the hunting dog in spotlighting/lamping. It is meant to walk beside the hunter(s) or alternatively on a quick release leash, waiting for any rabbits to be stunned and blinded by the beam.
Never been scuba diving at all, especially at night it must be an experience like no other! To be 100% honest id be too scared to try even imagining being stuck deep underwater in the dark!
Similar experience at a city park. Back when I did shift work at about 2 in the morning. In the middle of a residential neighborhood. Swept a decently powerful light across a long ~10 acre reservoir and thousands of terrified ducks, gees, swans, egrets, herons, cormorants all noisily took flight within seconds. I too left the area with haste.
Lotta stuff recently is creepy killers, weird-goings-on, etc., but he used to do stories about people getting sucked into dead-end passages when scuba-diving, getting stuck in tapering chimneys, etc. Nightmare fuel stuff…
Once you’re comfortable using scuba gear, the fear factor falls away. And the gear manufacturing industry is so highly regulated (tested and retested). Everything is highly reliable. Going scuba diving can be a very Zen like experience. Going in the dark isn’t much different from going during the day; you just have less light and a different experience with sea life (nocturnal creatures).
People get in trouble by making very stupid mistakes or letting arrogance get the better of them. Because of the training involved with scuba diving, it actually has a lower death rate than many other recreational activities: boxing, hang gliding, motorbike racing, canoeing, mountain climbing, mountain hiking, and… believe it or not, driving a car.
Yeah, thanks to you alerting me to Mr. Ballen a couple of years ago, I’ve been a subscriber and watch him frequently. There’s also Scary Interesting. That guy has many tales of scuba diving gone wrong. Most of them are due to cave diving… which is a pretty dangerous type of it, especially when going off on less traveled and deeper passages. He has a more laid back approach than Mr. Ballen (who is rather too detailed on some things [or repetitive] and sometimes a bit monotone). I like them both for their different narration personas.
