The following schedule is from the 72nd Annual Conference of the Southeastern Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies which was held October 21-24, 2018 in Mobile, Alabama.
AUTHORS: Nathan G. Wilhite, Jessica L. Mohlman, Rachel R. Gardner – University of Georgia Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources; I.B. Parnell, Georgia Department of Natural Resources; James A. Martin, University of Georgia Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL)
ABSTRACT: Censuses, indices, and abundance estimates can provide insight into local wildlife populations. For many avian species, these methods are conducted via auditory surveys which may be more efficient due to the life history, ecology, habitat selection, and behavior of a species. The use of acoustic recording devices (ARDs) is a rapidly growing method used to bolster current auditory surveys; however, ARDs have not been evaluated for monitoring Northern Bobwhite (Colinus virginianus). Estimating bobwhite abundances has historically been difficult due to their secretive nature and irregularity in calling rates under various weather conditions. Despite this, robust estimates of abundance are especially important when the population is harvested. Our goal is to evaluate bias, precision, and efficiency of ARDs for bobwhites compared to standard covey call surveys. We used clusters of three Wildlife Acoustics’ Song Meter 3’s to conduct covey call surveys on Di-Lane Wildlife Management Area in Burke County, Georgia. We deployed 54 clusters of ARDs for 162 total recording hours. Using signal strength and time-of-arrival, we will analyze these recordings by applying acoustic spatial capture-recapture methods to ARD clusters to individually identify vocalizing coveys. We used spatially-explicit capture-mark-recapture for 26 nights across 262 traps as our baseline abundance estimate. Current models from trapping data predict a bobwhite abundance across the property of 1631 individuals (SE ±232). This study was conducted as a comparison to standard covey call surveys that were performed simultaneously. Results of this study will seek to determine the effectiveness and feasibility of ARDs for bobwhite population estimation.
