Woodland Birdsong Monitoring

Background

Our role – a Tasmanian focus

Our team has been collecting acoustic recordings and conducting on-ground surveys to better represent Tasmania’s distinctive bird communities and vocalisations. This includes collecting and tagging additional recordings from under-represented species, Tasmanian endemic species, and widely distributed species that may have regional vocal differences, such as the Striated Pardalote.

With support from the Wedgetail Foundation and site access through the Tasmanian Land Conservancy and other landholders, the team (Alice Grieve, Ramit Singal, Erin Harris and Catherine Young) conducted 74 survey sets across 27 sites, including wet forest and dry forest locations across Tasmania. Sites included Tasmanian Land Conservancy reserves such as Brown Mountain, Five Rivers and Tinderbox, as well as Sustainable Timber Tasmania land and Land for Wildlife properties. At each site, acoustic recordings were paired with on-ground bird surveys. These paired surveys help validate the recognisers and support the development of a community health score that reflects the species detected at each site.

Partners and Funding

The project brings together a team across four states. It was supported through a federal government grant under the Innovative Biodiversity Monitoring Program, with additional funding from the Wedgetail Foundation to strengthen the Tasmanian component.

Project Team

Prof. Paul McDonald, University of New England

Prof. David Watson, Charles Sturt University

Dr Daniella Teixeira, Queensland University of Technology

Dr Courtney Melton, Bush Heritage Australia

Dr Catherine Young and Alice Grieve, NRM South

Prof. Martine Maron, University of Queensland

Prof. Paul Roe and Dr  Lance De Vine, Queensland University of Technology

Vicky Austin, University of New England

Using the Tool

The recogniser is intended to be made available as an open tool and work is now shifting towards making the tool easier to access and use. The recogniser can currently be run locally, with reports generated using R scripts to analyse results and produce standardised outputs. The project team is discussing options with the Australian Research Data Commons, EcoSounds and the Open EcoAcoustics project team to host the tool and audio collections through a more integrated platform. Further investment is needed to build a simple front end that allows users to upload audio, run analyses and incorporate outputs into their projects.