Thermal search that covers a treeline in one evening.
Thermal aerial searches for missing pets — covering treelines, ravines and back-property terrain that can take days to walk.
Thermal
Coordinates and coverage record
Dawn and after-dark searches
Ground you cannot walk fast enough
A missing animal usually is not far away — it is somewhere hard to see. Under a deck, inside a blackberry thicket, down a ravine, along a treeline that takes hours to walk and offers almost no sightline. The search area grows quickly, and the ground that most needs checking is exactly the ground that is slowest to cover on foot.
A thermal camera reads heat rather than shape, so an animal that is invisible in undergrowth can still register as a warm signature against cool ground. Flown systematically over the area around where a pet was last seen, it can cover in an evening what a person would need days to walk.
What you get
Systematic thermal sweep of the search area agreed with you
Immediate notification of any signature worth checking on the ground
Coordinates and imagery for anything flagged, so you can follow up precisely
A record of which ground was covered, so the search does not repeat itself
Guidance on where a follow-up flight would add the most
What we bring to a search
A lost pet search is rarely solved by one method. The drone covers ground quickly and reads heat that nobody can see from the treeline, but locating an animal and recovering one are different problems. Where scent work is the right call, searches are run alongside experienced dog handlers.
Survey drones
Aircraft flown on a planned pattern so ground is covered systematically rather than wandered, with a record of exactly what was swept and when.
Thermal and zoom cameras
Thermal reads body heat against cold ground and finds an animal that is visually lost in cover. Optical zoom confirms what the thermal found before anyone walks in and pushes it further.
Scent dogs and handlers
Where scent work is the right call, searches run alongside experienced dog handlers. A dog reads ground scent the air cannot show, and the two methods narrow a search far faster together than either does alone.
Humane traps and crates
Finding an animal and recovering one are different problems. A frightened pet that has been located still has to be contained safely, which usually means baited traps and crates rather than hands.
How it works
Talk through the search
Where the animal was last seen, how it tends to behave, what the terrain is like, and which ground has already been walked.
Set the search area
We define a realistic search area and priority sectors, and agree access and permissions for the properties involved.
Fly the sweep
The area is flown systematically in cool conditions, with anything warm flagged as it is found.
Follow up on the ground
Signatures worth checking are passed to you with coordinates, because recovery itself is done on foot by someone the animal knows.
Common questions
Does thermal see through bushes and undergrowth?
Partly — and that is the honest answer. Thermal detects heat that reaches the sensor, so light cover often still shows a signature while dense canopy or a thick blackberry mound can hide one completely. It improves the odds dramatically over a visual search; it does not guarantee a find.
When should the search be flown?
After dark or around dawn, once the ground has cooled and a warm body stands out most clearly. Searching in the middle of a warm afternoon puts the sensor at its weakest, so we will usually recommend waiting for conditions rather than flying immediately.
What happens if you find something?
We pass you the location and imagery, and recovery happens on the ground — almost always best done by an owner the animal recognises, since a frightened animal is unlikely to approach a stranger. We can advise on approach, but we do not attempt to capture or handle animals.
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