Black-and-white hawk-eagle (Spizaetus melanoleucus).

Photo: Amanda Guercio

Research periods are split into morning, afternoon, and night sessions, although typically active fieldwork is largely undertaken during two of these sessions on any particular day (e.g. afternoon and night or morning and afternoon), for a total of between 6-8 hrs per day. Morning session activities begin after breakfast at 7:00 am with caring for live bait species, followed by point counts or unbounded line transect surveys of soaring and perched raptors in open and forested areas. Mid-morning and mid-afternoon periods are also the best times for setting and monitoring the various baited traps (Bal-chatri, Verbail, bow nets) and of course, processing any captured raptors. Processing a bird once it has been extracted from a net or trap, involves placing a numbered and/or coloured band on its leg, weighing it, measuring it, assessing its sex and age from plumage and molt characteristics, and safely attaching a GPS tracking device (if it happens to be one of the focal species of interest for tracking). Night sampling sessions, focused on understanding owl ecology, begin after dinner at 8 pm and last around 3 hours. Unbounded line transect surveys of owls, using auditory cues, and nocturnal trapping of owls are the main activities, including processing captured owls in a similar manner to that described above. Vegetation and habitat sampling is undertaken across the home ranges used by focal raptor species, using multiple 10x50m vegetation plots. When weather conditions may not allow for raptor or vegetation sampling to take place, then these periods are used for data entry and data analysis purposes using project laptops. All research schedules and activities are subject to change at the discretion of the team coordinator.