Photo Gallery - Mountain Quail Project - 2016
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March 12-25
First day in the field. 10 inches of snow at 4,900 ft was a good sign - it means we've probably gotten started before quail returned to the area (they migrate to lower elevations in winter).	At 4,000 ft, in Hunter Creek drainage, quail have arrived, but are not responding to "playback" recordings yet. We deployed Autonomous Recording Units (ARUs) throughout the area to identify sites where males were vocalizing briefly at dawn. Note that the area burned during the 2013 Rim Fire.	A typical ARU installation. The metal security cover is cable-locked to a tree, and opened to program and service the unit. JB refers to these as his "robotic field crew".  They are currently programed to record sounds from 1/2 hour before sunrise until 1/2 hour after sunset. None has complained about the working conditions.
March 24-30
Setting of the south ARU array: a small basin.	Setting of the north ARU array: a gullied slope.
April 7-23
The Open Woodland study site	The Forest study site	The Chaparral study site
Preparing a 4-unit array of ARUs for deployment	Initializing a weather data logger before deployment	Weather data logger deployed at Forest site
Downloading initial weather data at the Chaparral site	Territorial males appear to be spaced at 30-40 m intervals along this ridge - truly a mountain quail "spectacle of nature" when they're all singing at dawn	Lush chaparral regrowth after the 2013 Rim Fire
	Difference in detection time across ARUs: vertical red line indicates detection time at closest ARU (ARU 7, on top), yellow box highlights the vocalization of interest. These differences permit calculation of distance, and hence the bird's location (by triangulation). Note that signal strength also declines with distance. Additional sounds at higher frequency (y-axis) are calls of other species.
April 24 - May 31
Mountain Quail at the chaparral site (photo by JB)	California Quail also occur at the chaparral site (photo by JB)	Routine servicing of an ARU (photo by Greg Gerstenberg)
June 1st - September 30th
Example of initial results: dots of diffent colors represent source locations of "queerk" calls of individual territorial males, distinguished by their unique voice sonograms. Data from the Chaparral site, May 2nd, 06:00-06:10. Yellow antenna icons indicate locations of audio recorders.	Indivdual males have unique voices

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