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.
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#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.)
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#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.)
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#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.
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#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

I was at home with online meetings today. Some people doodle. I sit by an open window and jot down when I see and hear my favourite wild animals.

It's often quickest to write on paper and enter later. I just typed in today's notes, mostly NZ bellbirds (Bellb) plus fantail (Ft).

I also track the bellbird song types. The main local male song is "doot Doot DEET Doot DEet doot" and females were singing "DEET DOot DEEt Doot DEet".

I know it's odd. 😄

#EcologicalMonitoring #wildcounts #nz #birds

I'm off to bed but my computer cranks on. It's using #BirdNet to ID all the bird songs recorded by our garden's #AudioMoth from the first half of the week, while an R script is hooked into AWS to transcribe the 772 geotagged audio notes I made today on my monthly 12 km run up from the city through Victoria Park and around the native forest on Sugarloaf peak.

Some parts of our crazy Big Tech timeline I'm OK with. 😄

#wildcounts #EcologicalMonitoring #nz

I was puzzling over the weak seasonal pattern in the tauhou in my BirdNet graphs, since they're more common in the winter in our garden. I carefully checked my R code. Sure enough, I found an error on one line, where I'd added the BirdNet seconds onto the start time from the filename. Turns out adding seconds onto time is a bit slipperier in R than I'd thought.

Here are the greatly improved graphs (up to yesterday's recordings).

#birds #EcologicalMonitoring #BirdNet #AudioMoth #nz

Since June 2021 I've had an #AudioMoth constantly recording bird song in our garden from 2 hours before sunrise to 2 hours after sunset. Over the past months I've been using #BirdNet to identify all the bird species.

Today I've managed to spit out my first graphs. I'm excited to finally see results so wanted to share them. There's all sorts of things happening.

Next I'll be comparing these automated patterns with all the counts I make manually.

#birds #EcologicalMonitoring #nz #garden

"chongli me to hi one"?

I've just automatically transcribed my 19,848 audio notes from November, from my ecological surveys around Ōtautahi-Christchuch, NZ. I spoke nature observations into my phone for 3065 minutes (51 hours), mostly while biking and running.

Now I've got some data cleaning to do. Most transcriptions come through spot on, or close to it, but the odd one is like "chongli me to hi one". Here I said "chaffinch song left mid ahead one".

#wildcounts #EcologicalMonitoring #nz

Here's part of my home office desk yesterday.

In the centre of the tangle is my iPad working as a third screen for my laptop. On it are the wildcounts I make through the day, in 20 minute intervals, of whenever I hear or see bellirds, fantails, grey warblers, kereru, and other pre-human native NZ birds, plus butterflies and calling cicadas. I've done this whenever next to an open window, since 2012.

#EcologicalMonitoring is easy!

Also, my desk is a tangled mess. 😄

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

Automated bird song ID is about good enough now so I've got my computer started on the job of identifying all the bird songs from my garden since June 2021. That's when I started recording with an AudioMoth from 2hr before sunrise to 2hr after sunset each day.

The BirdNet-Analyzer app is an offline app from Cornell University's Lab of Ornithology and Chemnitz University of Technology, trained on over 6,000 bird species worldwide.

https://github.com/kahst/BirdNET-Analyzer
#EcologicalMonitoring #birds #nz

Today I did my monthly wild counts survey up in the Port Hills of Ōtautahi-Christchurch, New Zealand, mapping and counting assorted species.

It was a cool and windy day, but still a satisfying adventure. This was my 103rd survey of this 12 km route, which takes me from the edge of the city up into wild native forest and back.

Here are some views along the public walking tracks.

#Ōtautahi #Christchurch #NZ #wildcounts #EcologicalMonitoring

Each month I run 12 km up from the edge of the housing in Cashmere in Ōtautahi-Christchurch city, through Victoria Park, and around the tracks in the old native forest on the back of Sugarloaf. Along the way I map and count a bunch of species (eg all birds) and take photopoints.

Today was my **100th survey** of this route.

Here's the upper Harry Ell track in July 2017, 2018, 2021, and 2024, showing the gradual recovery after the February 2017 fire.

#EcologicalMonitoring #wildcounts #nz

It was raining on my bike ride home from work tonight so my iPhone and microphone get wrapped in plastic bags, so I can continue to count the wild as I ride.

As I do.

🙂

https://wildcounts.org/blog/2018/06/02/How-to-count-the-wild-on-a-smart-phone-in-the-rain

#EcologicalMonitoring #wildcounts #nz #BikeTooter

One of the notable birds from my Port Hills bike ride yesterday was kōtare, the NZ kingfisher. I saw 5 on them riding to Lincoln. They like to perch on power lines, especially in the farmland, where I expect they catch lizards and small birds.

Over 59 monthly rides since 2019, my median count per ride is 1. I once saw 6 kōtare, in April 2021, but otherwise <5.

There's no clear long-term trend. In this age of environmental change, that's good news.

#birds #WildCounts #NZ #EcologicalMonitoring

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To learn more and apply, visit: https://raresites.org/fall-ecological-monitoring-assistant/

#Conservation #GreenJobs #WaterlooRegion #EcologicalMonitoring

For a workshop talk I'm working on, I looked up the public biodiversity data for Ōtautahi-Christchurch, #NZ. #iNaturalistNZ has 282,811 observations. #GBIF has 407,858 obs (incl. 115,098 research grade obs from iNat). I tallied up how many #wildcounts I've made from Ōtautahi, mostly from my bike rides to work and my weekend runs, and it's about 1,584,522 observations. So, about 4x everything else!

It underscores how very little biodiversity monitoring NZ does.

#EcologicalMonitoring

Here are 3 Australian critters I saw on my run yesterday in Ōtautahi-Christchurch, NZ. All are recent arrivals to the city and are spreading.

Little humped spiders showed up in 2014 and have since spread out to Pegasus, Leeston & Little River.

Passionvine hoppers showed up in Christchurch on iNaturalistNZ in 2016. They've exploded since & eat a wide range of plants.

Steelblue ladybirds first showed up in Christchurch in 2020.

#BiologicalInvasions #nature #EcologicalMonitoring #nz #WildCounts