TRC Taranaki Regional Council Environmental Award 2020

Last night at a special awards ceremony we were very proud and excited to be presented with an award from the Taranaki Regional Council for Educational Innovation for our sound lure project.   We were able to take a small group of students to this event to collect the award and we are extremely greatful for the nomination from Project Mounga and the TRC for the award.

A link to to details of the award is located here.

We also wanted to acknowledge the sponsors for this award, Contact Energy as we will be using the funds from this award to create more sound lures for deployment.

Solving the Mystery of Missing Eggs

As part of our ongoing project working on sound lures we are also looking at opportunities to use the technology involved in the project to engage with the students of our community and our community.  In this instance on a local farm where we have started the final possum trial and deployment the farmer had another issue, the dissapearance of duck eggs belonging to some farm animals.    While we were reconfiguring the possum sound lure we took the opportunity to use the cameras for tracking at the sound lure locations to solve the 'mystery' of the missing eggs.    We also went through a process of identifying with the students what could be going on, what animals could be involved etc.   

The ducks themselves were not attacked by the animals that were responsible for breaking of the eggs.  Whatever it was, was leaving the ducks alone and targetting their eggs.   The farmer placed some additional chicken eggs in the location where the ducks eggs 

The images from the camera were able to identify two possible explanations.   The first is shown in the night pictures from the area.  A hedgehog can clearly be seen operating in the area.   There is the possibility that it was responsible for the initial damage to the eggs followed by the hawk feasting on them.

The second stunning set of images catches the hawk that can be seen breaking the eggs including picking the eggs up in its beak and walking around.   If this was the case it maybe that the hedgehog was incidental to the hawk which committed its act without any encouragement from the hedgehog.

Clearly the date and timestamp of the trail camera shows that this occurred during the morning which the farmer was unaware of.   In this instance we have not recorded any hawk activity in the prior year of experimenting with the sound lures - and in this instance the sound lures were not involved in the process.  

However it was a fantastic opportunity to involve students in the learning process.   To further our discussion about predators (for instance we had almost decided to discount stoats on the basis that whatever was taking the eggs was not attacking the ducks themselves which is something that we could expect to see if a stoat was responsible.   

We would once again like to thank the local farmers who are assisting with our process and allowing our students to have such fantastic learning experiences.

Possum Sound Lure: Further Developments

 

We are now running our final trials with our Possum focussed sound lure.   It is being deployed and remaining silent during the day, activating when the light level starts to drop.  It is not being activated by being in shade, and first indications by changing our solar panel is that the new panel will run the unit in shade conditions.

While it is possible that there will be some minor adjustments most likely this is our final unit.

We have had some promising initial results, in the first few days we've had a brush tailed possum move to the sound lure site and interact with the sound lure, while ignoring the baited trap - including pulling the sound lure down from the box it was located on (as shown in the two photographs on the left.   While this is promising this is only the first result from a long term deployment, where we will be monitoring the process and progress at a number of South Taranaki locations.

While we have experienced instances of brush tailed possums already we are continuing to see significant rat activity at this site as well - the unit is now playing exclusively possum focussed noise where it was previously playing a combination of rat and other noises.

Will be monitoring this deployment for a considerable time moving forward.

Possum Sound Lure: Final Prototype

 

Today we've finally completed the coding and design of the Possum version of our sound lure.   This is going to target brush tailed possums locally in Taranaki.   

We are very fortunate to have the support of Venture Taranaki and the Curious Minds Project as part of this process who have been invaluable in assisting with funding to ensure this project goes ahead.

While the desgin of the unit is familiar to regular visitors to this blog there are some key differences between this unit and early versions, or the version that we are currently using to target Stoats and other pests.

Firstly we have significantly altered the code with regards to this version - this version of the unit remains silent during daylight hours (while it is charging) and will only start to activate at night, once the solar panel detects that the light level is 'night'.   This is of course because Possums are a nocturnal animal.   

Secondly the sound profile that is being played is exclusively possum related, rather than the generic version that we have been using to this point which has had a range of noises.   While it has shown clearly that possums appear to be attracted towards a range of noise we want to specifically see if there are sounds which are going to encourage possums more than others.   Our first batch of sounds are a range of possum noises that have been either supplied to us or available online that we've been able to adapt.   

Finally we have made our first technical change in nearly a year of our initial set ups.  We have significantly upgraded the solar panel that we are using with the unit.   Our first deploymenets involved using several different units, the main unit that we used was a Solar Panel that was 5v and 1.2w.   We were also running other versions of the lure with slightly larger units to see if we could get the balance right between charging the unit successfully and producing a cost effective way to do so.    While we felt the units were charging successfully we also were monitoring the unit in semi-shade conditions and the solar panles ability to be robust when faced with windy conditions.    We have made attempts to design ways to ensure the panel is attatched to the unit or produce seperate housing for it.   It should also be noted that the original panels that are still in use have been deployed outside for a full calendar year and are still working as expected with minimum protection for them.

Curious Minds: Final Preparation

 We are about to return to school for the start of the final term for 2020.   During the past month we have been awaiting for electronics delivery of the equipment needed to complete our sound lures for the Curios Minds part of our project targetting Possums.

In preparation for this we have been running a final deployment phase with the equipment that we will be using during the project to check its viability etc.   We have maintained two sites at a local farm, one containing a sound lure with Timms Possum trap and rat boxes, and a second site which contains a standard Timms Possums trap (both are ground mounted) and a rat box.

For the past month we have been logging the activity based on the activations at the traps and by using Browning Trail Cameras that are motivation activated to tell us what is happening where the units are deployed.   We have made some adjustments to the deployment at each site - both of which are bordering the river that is featured in deployment site one, on the other side to this location.

At the non sound lure site after a month we have had 76 image activations from 17 pest animals and two domestic cat activations.    We have had two rats removed by a box trap at the location.   We have experimented with using apple, lemon and the Timms trap has not been activated, although bait has been removed from the unit.    There is clear possum activity at this location and the number of image activations has been up to twenty at the site of the tree.

By contrast at the sound lure site we have had sixty activations from 32 pest animals including hedgehogs, possums and rats.   There have been five rats removed at this location, one hedgehog and one mouse.    These animals have caused sixty image activations on the cameras.   

However - there is a significant deployment change that occurred in the week from 4/10/2020 to the 11/10/2020.    Until this point the sound lure that was deployed as part of this set up was placed inside the rat box, with the intention of seeing if it would encourage rats to enter the box.      For the last week it was decided to instead place the lure on top of the rat box as this it was believed would cause the sound to be significantly greater.

This would appear to have had a significant impact on the activations at this location.   

Prior to this the target species of Brush Tailed Possums had appeared five times for single activations.   Rats were dominating the activations at the site.   

The week when the unit was switched to the top of the rat box (as shown) there were eight possum activations and thirty activations from the cameras as the possums were active in the trap location and remained at the location during the activations of the sound lure.   

There were multiplication activations including a pair of Possums and possums showing interest in the different traps/lures on display (although there was not any setting off of the traps).   The rats which had been so prevelant during the first three weeks of deployment were not active.

In contrast at Deployment Site One, on the other side of the river there have been limited interactions all of which have centred around rats.

We will continue to monitor both sites moving forward as this is a pleasing indication that the lure is showing promise if used in the right situations.  We also need to look at modifying the sound which is part of the deployment so it is focussed on Possums or rats rather than the generic sound pattern that we are currently using for the test purposes (which still includes for instance the original stoat profile which we have been using for a year).   

Also of note the unit that is being deployed at site two is the original unit which is approaching nearly a year in deployment.   This unit is featuring an original solar panel, wiring and speaker which has been left in outside conditions for a full calendar year.   The unit is still operating as anticipated without showing any damage from the elements.