#ecologicalmonitoring — Public Fediverse posts

Most of my afternoon today was spent in #QGIS with one of my Masters students Dee Patel.

We're preparing my long-term bird monitoring data around Christchurch, NZ, for analysis. Today we gridded up my four standard bike transects into 1 km sections, surrounded by approximately 1 km square polygons.

Dee's particularly interested in how the conversion of farmland to urban housing affects birds.

Next Dee will be doing some clever analysis of my distance sampled bird counts to estimate the density of each bird species in each grid cell in each month over the past 12–23 years (depending on the route). She'll then compare those densities with land use changes from the NZ land cover database.

It's going to be interesting to see what patterns emerge.

#EcologicalMonitoring #birds #nz #ecology #LincolnUniversityNZ

@Brad_Rosenheim Yes, there's a significant increase in korimako across this route and all my city routes, especially in the hills. Here's a snapshot of my first and most recent July runs up in the hills by the city. The difference is striking, especially in the native forest.

More trees + older trees + pest control = more forest birds

#birds #korimako #Anthornis #bellbird #nz #EcologicalMonitoring

Here's an animated movie of the accumulating korimako observations over the past 18 years along my fortnightly 10.1 km run route in Ōtautahi-Christchurch, NZ.

https://flic.kr/p/2soCFTA

#wildcounts #EcologicalMonitoring #birds #Christchurch #Ōtautahi #NZ #Flickr #animation #map #qgis #bellbird

This week was the 18th birthday of fortnightly run route through southwestern Ōtautahi-Christchurch, NZ. This is my 10.1 km route where I've been counting and mapping all the birds and butterflies and assorted other species.

I started the route on 9 July 2008, while on parental leave, pushing my baby daughter around in a buggy during her afternoon nap. I wanted her to be able to know how the city's nature changes over her lifetime. I've been doing it ever since (and have added three other routes to cover other parts of the city).

In celebration of the route's 18th birthday, here are all the korimako (NZ bellbirds) I've seen and heard. Korimako have been a huge success story for the city. The native forest regeneration and pest control happening in the city's Port Hills have led to booming numbers of korimako, and the native tree plantings in the city have been attracting birds out from the hills.

As my run route has shown, within the city the korimako are mostly in areas of native tree plantings and in gardens with mature bird nectar plants (especially kōwhai, banksia, eucalyptus, and harakeke). Korimako are still largely absent from the areas of housing that don't have any of these.

(We still need many more native trees in the city if we want more native birds.)

#wildcounts #EcologicalMonitoring #birds #Christchurch #Ōtautahi #NZ #nature #ecology

I just uploaded my NZ garden bird survey for the year. Today's the last day to take part. You just need to spend an hour in your garden and, to quote the survey website,

> Look for birds for ONE hour in your survey area.
> For each species record the HIGHEST number seen (or heard) at one time.

My tally here in Ōtautahi is 6 korimako, 5 blackbirds, 1 piwakawaka, 1 karoro (it flew by), 1 kererū, 1 magpie, 50 silvereyes (at least, they're hard to count at our sugar water feeders), 3 house sparrows, 3 starlings, 3 black shags (flew by).

Here's a female blackbird enjoying our water bath during my survey.

https://gardenbirdsurvey.nz/

#birds #NZGardenBirdSurvey #nz #ecologicalMonitoring

This coming week, everyone in NZ is invited to take an hour off to hang out with the birds.

Tomorrow (Saturday 27 June) is the start of this year's New Zealand Garden Bird Survey. We've got a week to set aside an hour in our gardens to tally up all the bird species we can see and hear.

You don't need to count every bird through the hour. You just note the maximum number of each species you can observe at one time. So, if blackbirds come and go and the most blackbirds you see at once is three on your lawn, you enter "3".

The survey has been running since 2007 and is an important assessment of how the birds in our gardens are doing. The more people get involved, the more we learn. Plus, it's fun.

https://gardenbirdsurvey.nz/

#NZGardenBirdSurvey #birds #EcologicalMonitoring #nz

Phew. This has been what's felt like my busiest teaching semester ever and lots of little things have had to be parked. One of those things has been curating all the wildcounts ecological surveys I do. That's where I make lots of geotagged audio notes of every time I see or hear a set of species that I consistently observe. Today I forced a brief pause in my end of semester marking to catch up and import my recent surveys from my phone onto my computer. This way I can get the transcriptions running while I mark exams.

Between 24 March–4 June, I made 6.2 GB of audio notes on my phone, 3,8702 observations in total, from 159 route surveys and 498 site surveys. I'll let the transcriptions run over the next week so they'll be ready for me to clean when marking is done.

(This is my long-term slow science project to document the changes in biodiversity where I live over the decades when I'm working as an ecologist.)

#EcologicalMonitoring #wildcounts

After recent media stories about butterfly declines in New Zealand, centred around one transect in Nelson, it's heartening to see in Stacey Lewthwaite's graphs that kahukura and monarch butterflies have not declined around Christchurch. That's in the last two decades along my 78 km of transects.

#EcologicalMonitoring #butterflies #Ōtautahi #Christchurch #NZ

Here's some good news about local birds here in NZ.

Today I've been editing the final draft of a MSc thesis by Stacey Lewthwaite. Stacey has been applying her data skills to my 20+ year dataset of species counts between Christchurch and Lincoln. The bulk of her thesis has focused on looking at the phenology shifts (in abundance, flowering, singing) associated with climate change.

I don't want to steal much of Stacey's thunder just yet but I wanted to share these two good news graphs. These are the numbers of korimako (NZ bellbirds) and ducks (mallards/greylard hybrids) that I've counted per bike ride over the past two decades.

Both species have got *considerably* more abundant over this time period.

For korimako, we think it's because of the forest regeneration and mammalian predator control in their breeding grounds in the nearby Port Hills, done by City Council rangers and Summit Road Society volunteers. For the ducks, we think it's the planting of flood retention wetlands around the fringes of the city plus the increase in farm irrigation.

So, while we hear a lot of scary doom and gloom about nature in the media, some species are thriving because of our actions. Let's do more of that.

#EcologicalMonitoring #nz #nature #birds #LincolnUniversityNZ

@rnzbot_nz This article is referring to a short report on the website of the Moths and Butterflies of NZ Trust (link below). It shows a concerning decline in butterflies since 2009 along a monthly transect through the streets of Nelson walked by Kiran Thodiyll Kanakambujan.

Comparing with iNaturalist observations, the decline is at least consistent with the rise in observations of exotic paper wasps in the area. These are big predators of caterpillars, as the RNZ article notes.

We need a lot more monitoring like this. While the news headline boldly pronounces a significant decline in New Zealand's butterflies, that's not my impression from surveying butterflies in and around Christchurch city. I think it depends a lot on location. Worryingly, European paper wasps are just starting to ramp up in numbers in Christchurch while they've been abundant in Nelson for a decade.

If you want to contribute to standard butterfly monitoring, the Trust recommends butterfly-monitoring.net.

https://www.nzbutterflies.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/Kiran-Brief-Report-Nelson-Transect.pdf

https://butterfly-monitoring.net/

#insects #insectSurvey #entomology #butterflies #nz #EcologicalMonitoring

I spent Thursday morning this week at Ōruapaeroa-Travis Wetland, the largest freshwater wetland in Ōtautahi-Christchurch city, NZ. Once destined for more housing, the local community's protests led to the city buying up the land and restoring it for nature.

I'm helping PhD student Tommy Copeland to monitor the invertebrates of the wetland. Tommy's both repeating traditional survey methods used in a survey in the mid-1990s, and trying out new methods.

Enter Victor Anton from Wildlife.AI, a NZ-based non-profit dedicated to using artificial intelligence tech to improve conservation. On Thursday Victor gave Tommy one of their first field-ready prototypes of a new camera system with app control and built in machine learning image recognition. Tommy's going to be trialling it to see how he, with the Travis community group, can monitor invertebrates with this camera system.

Stay tuned.

https://wildlife.ai/

#EcologicalMonitoring #Conservation #invertebrates #Ōtautahi #Christchurch #nz #TravisWetland #WildlifeAI

I've been counting birds on my bike work commute between Christchurch and Lincoln, NZ, since 2003. On Friday, I counted my *first ever* Kōtuku Ngutupapa, Royal Spoonbill, on the route.

It was feeding in a paddock that had been recently scraped clear preparing it for a housing subdivision, but in the meantime had filled with water after a heavy rain. There are also restored wetlands nearby that I hope was what attracted it in. Perhaps there will be more.

#birds #nz #spoonbill #EcologicalMonitoring #wildcounts #UrbanEcology

https://inaturalist.nz/observations/340743507

I spent part of my summer on Banks Peninsula with a team from #LincolnUniversityNZ monitoring lizards, invertebrates, and birds. We also, optimistically, put out a set of bat recorders.

Native bats haven't been reliably sighted on Banks Peninsula in many decades but there's always hope that there's a colony or two out there somewhere. If you know the Peninsula, we put our recorders out at Tutakakahikura, Ellangowan, Panama Rock, Mount Pearce, Hay Reserve, and Montgomery Reserve. All have areas of old growth forest with some gnarly old trees where bats could roost.

Sadly, the results are in and we detected no bats.

:ablobsigh:

#ecology #EcologicalMonitoring #nz #bats #BanksPeninsula

Each season I do four nights of moth lighting in my garden in suburban Ōtautahi-Christchurch, NZ. My summer moth lighting this year started on Saturday. I photograph every moth that settles at my light and today I've been uploading my photos to #iNaturalist.

I've been doing this consistently each autumn since 2015 and every season each year since (at least) 2021. You might think I would have found all the moth species that visit my garden, but no.

So far I've finished uploading Saturday's moth photos and have found six new species to our garden. Here are four of them.

There's the endemic moth *Gymnobathra hamatella*:
https://inaturalist.nz/observations/337290749

There's the "nationally vulnerable" endemic species *Gadira leucophthalma*:
https://inaturalist.nz/observations/337263605

There's the endemic Clematis triangle *Deana hybreasalis*:
https://inaturalist.nz/observations/337285888

Also, less ideal, there's the introduced Case-bearing Clothes Moth *Tinea pellionella*:
https://inaturalist.nz/observations/337285916

#mothodon #moths #Lepidoptera #Ōtautahi #Christchurch #NZ #insects #EcologicalMonitoring

For the past week four of us from #LincolnUniversityNZ were based at Hinewai Reserve on Banks Peninsula, NZ. We visited a set of monitoring sites in and out of the predator control area of the Predator Free Banks Peninsula project. Predator Free Banks Peninsula is primarily targetting brush-tailed possums at the moment and we're interested in how that is affecting birds, lizards, and invertebrates.

We've been doing this for several years so we're also interested in what the general trends are in these animals in this amazing landscape.

We counted, weighed, and photographed all the lizards in our lizard shelters (mostly geckos). Jennifer Gillette is using the unique patterns on geckos' backs and irises to track individuals over the years.

We also brought in our audio recorders, which monitored birds and, optimistically, bats. Bats haven't officially been detected on Banks Peninsula in decades. There's still hope so we put out bat recorders in several of the areas of oldest forest.

We also brought in our invertebrate pitfall traps.

We've got three more days on the Peninsula this coming week, then we can get stuck into identifying the specimens, processing the data, and finding our what the patterns and trends are.

#ecology #fieldwork #EcologicalMonitoring #BanksPeninsula #NZ

I've learned the hard way that there is an enormous difference between microSD cards in the amount of power they need. When it comes to putting audio recorders out in nature, that matters a lot.

As an example, I was just comparing my latest AudioMoth results with SanDisk Extreme 64GB cards compared with Samsung Pro Plus 128 GB cards last year.

In the same device, with the same dawn-dusk daytime recording settings, on the same three fully-charged Powerex rechargeable batteries, the Samsung card recorded for four days (11 GB) before flattening the batteries, while the SanDisk cards recorded for 12 days (44 GB) before the flattening the batteries.

Given that it takes a lot of time for me to get to these remote sites to deploy these recorders, this makes a big difference to how much data I get.

#AudioMoth #AudioRecorder #birds #BirdMonitoring #EcologicalMonitoring #SDcards #EcologyMethods

We live in an age of unprecedented, rapid environmental change. One of my personal responses to this, as a trained ecologist, has been to consistently count as many of the changes in nature around my city as I can. I've got a series of regular routes around the city where I map and count all birds, butterflies, assorted other insects, plants and fungi, and vertebrates. Hence "JonCounts".

I just tallied up my biodiversity surveys and observations from 2025:

52 weekly and 12x2 monthly run routes: total distance 1,095 km
240 daily and 12x3 monthly bike routes: total distance 6,898 km
225,516 species observations, including transcriptions from 466 hours of field audio notes
~60,000 photos
1,225 audio recordings of species vocalising

that's plus my automated AudioMoth recordings and monthly timelapse phototransects

This creates an enormous amount of data curation work, which I typically chip away at over my summer holidays, like now (at the moment I'm correcting errors in the automated transcriptions).

#wildcounts #nz #EcologicalMonitoring

My Port Hills audio recorders seem to have detected a ruru (morepork) in Kennedy's Bush. This morning I listened to the sections of recording that BirdNet had identified with moderate certainty as being riflemen (no, these were baby korimako), pīpipi (no, these were a combination of riroriro and piwakawaka singing at once), and ruru. Surprisingly, the ruru seem to be ruru, just five detections in total over a 10 day stretch from Kennedy's Bush.

I've just posted them on #iNaturalist, where they're the first ruru from the Port Hills. I recently heard that someone had heard a ruru at Living Springs, and eBird has one record, without a recording, from Hackthorne Road from 2023. I'm not aware of any ruru in Kennedys Bush or elsewhere in the Port Hills.

It's promising, if true. Oddly, my owl was singing in the day time. Perhaps it's a young bird travelling.

Have a listen and please disagree if you know of another local bird that would make similar calls.

https://inaturalist.nz/observations?subview=table&verifiable=any&field:Same%20specimen%20over%20time=332064177

#birds #owls #nz #Ninox #ruru #moreport #Christchurch #BirdNet #AudioMoth #EcologicalMonitoring #AudioMonitoring

The last three days I've been along the Port Hills of Ōtautahi-Christchurch, NZ, doing my monthly biodiversity surveys. Saturday was my 117th run up through Victoria Park and Sugarloaf, and today was my 80th bike ride along the Summit Road from Cashmere.

Since September this year I've added 27 AudioMoths along the routes to record bird songs, so now I come back with an iPhone filled with audio notes, a camera filled with photos, and now a pocket filled with bird songs to analyse.

Here are some photos of the scenery from each of the three days, plus today's handful of bird song.

#EcologicalMonitoring #nz #Ōtautahi #Christchurch #wildcounts

Perhaps the biggest highlight of today's run up through the Ōtautahi Port Hills was just how many more korimako (NZ bellbirds) there are about now compared with when I started doing this survey.

I just checked and on my July 2017 run, I made 54 korimako observations. Today, on the same route, I made 249(!). That's just the mapped points. Some of today's observations were of about 50 birds singing at once.

Check out the two maps to see the big difference.

Huge credit here goes to the City Council Port Hills rangers and the volunteers of the Summit Road Society. Both groups have been helping the native forest to regenerate and have been controlling the pest mammals that eat the birds. It's working!

#UrbanEcology #EcologicalMonitoring #birds #nz #Christchurch #map #ChristchurchCityCouncil #SummitRoadSociety

Today I did my monthly biodiversity run up into the Port Hills of Ōtautahi-Christchurch city, NZ. That takes my out of the Cashmere suburbs through the planted native forest and grasslands of Victoria Park and up into the old growth and naturally regenerated native forest of Sugarloaf peak.

I've been doing this route monthly since 2016, mapping and counting out birds and butterflies and assorted plants and fungi.

Here are some of today's highlights.

I had a close encounter with a kererū, perched about 1 metre from me (always a treat): https://inaturalist.nz/observations/297848998

A kahukura (red admiral) was feeding from exotic Viburnum flowers: https://inaturalist.nz/observations/297849009

Some scarlet pouch fungi were lighting up the forest floor on Sugarloaf: https://inaturalist.nz/observations/297848989

The one taramea (Aciphylla subfabellata speargrass) that I know of is still up by the Summit Road and looking healthy: https://inaturalist.nz/observations/297848991

#nature #WildCounts #UrbanEcology #EcologicalMonitoring

Here are my bird results for this year's NZ #GardenBirdSurvey. This is the maximum number of each bird species I saw or heard at one time during the hour.

60 silvereyes (approximately, seen and calling, at our sugar water feeders and in our flowering Eucalyptus tree)
20 house sparrows (approximately, seen and calling)
5 korimako (NZ bellbird)
4 blackbirds
2 piwakawaka (calling nearby)
2 black-backed gulls (flying by)
1 dunnock (heard calling)
1 starling

A song thrush started singing a minute after I finished, so it doesn't get in this year. No kererū this time, unfortunately, although there was one perched in our garden yesterday.

The Garden Bird Survey doesn't take photos so I'm about to load those onto #iNaturalist. Here are four of them.

#birds #nz #UrbanEcology #EcologicalMonitoring

I'm heading out into our garden, with my woolly hat on, to do my 1-hour bird count for this year's NZ #GardenBirdSurvey.

The last day for the 2025 survey is today.

https://gardenbirdsurvey.nz/

#birds #nz #EcologicalMonitoring

If you’re going to count some garden birds in Aotearoa-New Zealand this year, this week is the time to do it. Each winter the NZ Garden Bird Survey gives us a snapshot of how our birds are doing. The more people join in, the more we learn about our feathered friends.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/565412/annual-new-zealand-garden-bird-survey-begins

https://gardenbirdsurvey.nz/take-part/

#NZ #Birds #NZGardenBirdSurvey #EcologicalMonitoring #CitizenScience

Check out what I saw on my afternoon run through Cashmere, Christchurch, NZ.

This was on one of my fortnightly ecological survey runs through the city, 12 km, which I started in 2008. Today is the first time I have seen a tūī on this route!

Yeah!

https://inaturalist.nz/observations/289447711

#birds #tui #nz #EcologicalMonitoring #wildcounts

I've previously posted graphs from my AudioMoth audio recordings from our garden, with the recordings processed through Birdnet to automatically detect (some) of the bird songs.

Manually counting birds while hanging out laundry is arguably simpler (if you know your birds), and I've been doing it for much longer than the AudioMoth, and storing the results doesn't take terrabytes of storage.

There's still a big space for doing ecological monitoring manually in this high-tech age.
4/4

#EcologicalMonitoring

Here are four of the native birds from my weekly #wildcounts while hanging out or bringing in my laundry.

Korimako (NZ bellbirds) are trending up, and are more often in our garden in the winter.

Piwakawaka (NZ fantail) are doing the same.

Kererū (NZ wood pigeon) are much more common than they were originally. It wasn't until 2017 that I counted my first kererū from the laundry line.

Riroriro (grey warbler) are declining (and I don't understand why).

(Tauhou, the silvereyes, which I've not added a graph for here, are abundant and show no long-term trend.)
3/4

#EcologicalMonitoring #wildcounts #nz #birds

Here are four of the local butterflies from my weekly #wildcounts while hanging out or bringing in my laundry.

Kahukura (NZ red admiral) are trending up, and are more often in our garden in the summer.

Native coppers are trending down (here I've combined the winter copper and glade copper as I don't always stop to chase them to ID which species it is). I don't understand this as their host plant grows nearby.

NZ blues are trending up. I didn't see my first one from the laundry line until 2022 and I've them occasionally since.

Monarchs (the American species, which is wild here) show no trend (we don't plant swan plants so they just fly through).

(The Australian Yellow admirals show no trend, and I see them less frequently than the NZ endemic kahukura.)
2/4

#EcologicalMonitoring #wildcounts #nz #butterflies

Just before Covid knocked me over at the end of last week, I was fortunate to present a talk at the AGM of the Summit Road Society. That's the long-running local community group dedicating to maintaining and restoring the nature and heritage of Christchurch's Port Hills (NZ).

I was asked to talk about how nature has been changing in the Port Hills. Since I live in the hills, I started my talk with our garden. The laundry line, to be exact.

Every time I hang out or bring in our laundry, I count the local birds and butterflies. I've been doing that consistently since March 2012. It allows me to easily see how nature is changing in my garden.

I hadn't updated my graphs since 2023. To keep things simple, the graphs and analyses I showed just use the presence/absence of each species each time I'm at the laundry line (although I also make counts). If you didn't want to count individuals, you could just tick presence/absence and you'd also start to see trends.

I call this kind of simple, consistent, high frequency counting of nature, #wildcounts.

You might be interested in the trends that are appearing. Some species are trending up, others are down, and I don't always understand why.
1/4

#NZ #EcologicalMonitoring #Ōtautahi #Christchurch

Over lunch I updated my graphs from the AudioMoth bird recorder that runs in our garden in Ōtautahi-Christchurch, New Zealand. I'm coming up on 4-years of continuous recording now, from 2-hours before sunrise to 2-hours after sunset each day.

I find it interesting how different bird species have different, yet annually consistent, seasonal flows in and out of our garden. Here are some examples.

The korimako – NZ bellbird (*Anthornis melanura*), peaks in winter and dips in summer, as does the tauhou – silvereye (*Zosterops lateralis.*), from Australia.

In contrast, the house sparrow (*Passer domesticus*) and greenfinch (*Chloris chloris*), both from Britain, peak in summer and mostly leave the garden in winter.

I don't conpletely understand why this happens. Korimako breed elsewhere up in the hills, so that makes sense, but where do the tauhou go in summer and why do the house sparrows leave in winter?

#birds #nz #seasonality #ecology #EcologicalMonitoring #UrbanEcology