Listen Up! Remote Acoustic Bird Monitoring for Assessing Forest Management Actions
This project explores the presence of seven owl species across four conservation lands in the Kitsap Peninsula with Cowling Creek Preserve and Grovers Creek Preserve being the predominant focus of the review. This project utilized external audio recording devices (AudioMoths) as the focal data collecting method though additional data processing methods were also exercised through Arbimon to analyze and synthesize findings. Despite the sophisticated attempts to identify these seven species, results were not as abundant as originally anticipated. Through this ten-week process that included over 150 hours of committed work, Barred owl presence was detected at both Cowling Creek Preserve and Grovers Creek Preserve with 79 total “hits”. This study detected a total of 71 hits at Cowling Creek Preserve which was mostly detected between the hours of 18:00-24:00 while Grovers Creek Preserve totaled 8 hits also mostly occurring between the hours of 18:00-24:00. No other target species were detected in any of the 16 study plots across the four conservation properties which suggests possible explanations for their apparent absence might include 1) The lands may not include suitable habitats; 2) the acoustic analysis may have not detected their vocalization; or 3) the recording periods did not capture the appropriate seasons when the animals would be vocalizing (e.g., seasonality). The purpose of this study was to explore the efficiency of remote acoustic monitoring for these nocturnal bird species, discuss possible explanations for their apparent absence, and address habitat requirements and appropriate restoration measures that may be necessary.
