The Bird Checker app: estimate bird occupancy on farms
Ever wondered which birds might live on your farm? The Sustainable Farms webtool, Bird Checker: A bird occupancy estimator, enables the user to estimate which birds are likely to be found on a farm in the box-gum grassy woodlands.
A beta version of the app is now live for testing and consultation!
Enter details about a farm’s region and number of woodland patches to get a list of what birds might be seen there. Create a report, and head outside to see if you can see the birds that the app suggests are most likely to be there.
You can also use the app to estimate which birds might live on your farm under different scenarios, for example if you:
- convert part of a paddock into new woodland
- remove woodland
- dissuade Noisy Miners, which are aggressive towards other birds, from living in your woodland patches
- have a wet year
- and more.
Bird Checker is designed by Dr Kassel Hingee and Dr Martin Westgate, and was developed in collaboration with Meat & Livestock Australia. It is still in development so please bear with us as we continue to refine the functionality of the tool.
BirdChecker uses a statistical model to estimate occupancy of 60 woodland bird species, including five of conservation concern. To produce the bird estimations, the app combines world-class remote sensing (drawn from the Centre for Water and Landscape Dynamics) with decades of bird surveys by expert Sustainable Farms ecologists in box gum grassy woodlands on farms. Surveys occurred over two decades at 518 different locations, stretching from northern Victoria, through NSW to southern Queensland.
Scroll down to use the beta version of the app, or click here to open in a new window. The final, revised app will launch later in 2021.
To use the app, choose your region, set your woodland patches, and see an estimate of birds on your farm!
Banner photos L-R: Leo (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0), Caroline Jones, Patrick Kavanagh (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).