Imaging equipment
In both Australia and New Zealand, the Sierra-Olympic Vayu HD uncooled microbolometer array has been used in these types of programs. This imager has a 24 × 14.5 mm sensor that produces a 1920 × 1200 pixel image and has a refresh rate of either > 30 (Generation 1, New Zealand) or 60 Hz (Generation 2, Australia). We viewed output from the thermal imager on a Blackmagic Video Assist 7" 12G HDR monitor (blackmagicdesign.com/au/products/blackmagicvideoassist) and recorded video onto an external SSD for later review. A Panasonic GH5 4K video camera was also mounted to the top of the thermal imager to collect comparative visual footage of animal detections. The imager and monitor were mounted to a custom-built frame which was then suspended using an Easyrig Minimax camera mount (easyrig.se) worn by the thermal operator. The laser pointer was mounted to the top of the thermal imager and calibrated to point to the centre of the field of view. The thermal operator used the laser to visually identify the location of detected animals to the shooter (Fig. 3). The shooter was also equipped with a thermal scope (either clip on or interchangeable with the visual scope) and carried handheld thermal binoculars or a monocular to assist with searching and species identification.