Jerdon's courser

Jerdon's Courser is one of India’s rarest birds. Coincidentally, its habitat, historic records and last records are very close to our campus. We are collaborating with Jegan (the leading Jerdon's Courser biologist) to attempt a study with acoustic detections across the landscape where it was previously sighted.

Passive Acoustics of Shola birds

The Shola Sky Islands have been modified significantly in the last few decades, especially with invasion of exotic timber trees. There are some records of forest specialist birds in these exotic plantations. We used Automated Recorders deployed for over one year to asses usage of habitats by forest birds

Detecting rare species with acoustic  arrays

Acoustic arrays of multiple microphones are being increasingly used for a number of ecological questions. Arrays, especially in an aquatic environment, can either be stationary or towed behind a research vessel. Our study uses a towed four element array in combination with distance sampling to estimate group densities of coastal cetacean species.

Forest owlet

The forest owlet is a rare bird that is being differentially detected in different landscapes. We tested the possibility of using Automated Recording Units for detecting this species among co-occurring owlets. This project was carried out in collaboration with SACON

Automated bird song detection

There is a global interest in using various approaches to detect bird species from automated recordings collected from the wild. In this project we collaborate with IIT Mandi who are working on an algorithm for species detection, and C-DAC Bangalore who are developing indigenous automated recorders

White-bellied sholakili SONG DIVERSITY

​The White-bellied sholakili is bird with a highly variable vocal repertoire. We study this variation at two levels, one at the individual level looking at song complexity and song sharing and the other at the population level looking at cultural dialects.