Conversion of a Sound Lure to target Rooks

We have recently had a number of events take place that have caused us to focus our engergies in slightly different directions.   We have had visits from film crews from Al Jazeera, participated in the Australian Feral Futures Virtual Students Conference and we had a presentation at Puke Ariki Museum in New Plymouth.

Today we had a visit from Sam, who is the TRC Rook officer.    The Rook, which is considered a significant pest bird has not yet made its way in large numbers to South Taranaki although it has been recently sighted in Hollard Gardens, a significant local location.

The sound lure has been converted into a Rook lure with the idea that the lure can be used to encourage a rook into a trap.    The set up for the unit is essentially the sam set up that has been used for daytime (stoat) profiles.   The only difference in this case would be coding the unit to go silent during the evening as the rook sound lure is not required to be operating.   

We have always thought that there is mulitple purposes for the sound lure as despite having a focus on stoats initially, possums have been shown to be interested and in addition to this feral cats and rats have also made frequent appearances on tracking cameras.

We will be monitoring these results and update them as the trial progresses.

There is additional information on Rooks, relevant to New Zealand on the Pest Detective website located here, this is also where the photograph for this blog post was taken from.