Listening to the terns: Jennifer Godfrey awarded 2026 Graham Harrington Student Research Scholarship
- Renée Jean Cassels
- 23 hours ago
- 4 min read
Renée Cassels | Secretary
BirdLife Northern Queensland is delighted to announce Jennifer Godfrey as the recipient of the 2026 Graham Harrington Student Research Scholarship, awarded unanimously by the Branch Committee.
Jennifer is undertaking an Honours Degree in Science at James Cook University. Her project, “Passive acoustic monitoring of Bridled Terns (Onychoprion anaethetus) on the Great Barrier Reef”, is investigating whether the sounds of a breeding colony can provide a reliable and practical way of monitoring its population.
If successful, the method developed at Low Island could ultimately help conservation managers monitor Bridled Tern colonies elsewhere across the Great Barrier Reef – including colonies that are difficult, expensive, or impractical to survey regularly.
An important bird that is difficult to count
Bridled Terns breed on islands throughout tropical and subtropical seas. More than one per cent of the estimated global population breeds within the South Barnard Islands Key Biodiversity Area alone, with approximately 70 additional breeding colonies across the Great Barrier Reef.
But Bridled Terns are surprisingly difficult to count. They commonly nest beneath vegetation, rocks, and other cover, making accurate surveys particularly challenging on remote, steep, or densely vegetated islands.
For conservation managers, that presents an obvious problem: you cannot readily detect population change if you cannot reliably and repeatedly count the population.
Listening instead of looking
Jennifer’s project explores another possibility – listening to the colony.
Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) uses autonomous recording units to record animal sounds over extended periods. Recorders can remain in the field for weeks or months, providing a continuous record that would be impossible to obtain through conventional observer surveys alone.
But hearing more birds does not necessarily mean there are more birds. Calling rates can change with breeding stage, behaviour, time of day, weather, and other factors, while vegetation, topography, and background noise can all affect what a recorder detects.
That makes validation critical. Research using passive acoustics to estimate bird abundance has shown promising relationships between acoustic measures and independently measured abundance, including Australian work on Short-tailed Shearwaters, but those relationships need to be established for individual species and monitoring situations.
Why Low Island?
Previous work on Bridled Terns at the Barnard Islands demonstrated that passive acoustic monitoring was technically feasible, but steep and overgrown terrain made obtaining accurate visual counts for comparison difficult.
Low Island offers a valuable testing ground. Its relatively open vegetation, small size, and birds accustomed to regular human visitation allow Jennifer to combine autonomous acoustic recorders and camera traps with repeat visual censuses of the colony.
These complementary methods will help Jennifer investigate what changes in the acoustic record actually mean. Do more calls indicate more birds, a particular stage of breeding, changing behaviour, or some combination of these factors?
Importantly, autonomous recorders and cameras also continue observing when researchers are absent. That creates a record through time and may capture unexpected changes or events between field visits – increasingly valuable as seabirds face pressures including changing marine conditions, extreme weather, food availability, disturbance, and disease.
Research in the real world
As Jennifer is discovering, field research rarely proceeds exactly as it appears on paper.
Her original methodology included establishing a banded Bridled Tern population on Low Island. The team is continuing to pursue the necessary approvals, but scientific research involving wildlife on protected islands operates within important permitting, animal ethics, biosecurity, and conservation requirements, and approvals may not be available within the timeframe of an Honours project.
Rather than delay an entire breeding season of data collection, Jennifer and her supervisory team are considering how the methodology can adapt while maintaining the project’s central scientific and conservation objectives.
That ability to respond to new information, logistical constraints, and regulatory requirements without losing sight of the research question is an important part of applied conservation science.
Strong science, strong support
Jennifer is supervised by Dr Golo Maurer, Director Bird Conservation Strategy at BirdLife Australia, together with Associate Professor Martijn van de Pol and Dr Nicholas Friedman at James Cook University. The project has also involved organisations including Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, Birds Queensland, and the Low Isles Preservation Society.
Following discussions with Jennifer and Golo about the evolving methodology, the Graham Harrington Student Research Scholarship Subcommittee has given its full support to the project adapting where necessary.
We have every confidence in Jennifer and her experienced supervisory team to deliver rigorous and valuable research, and are confident the $3,000 scholarship will be well used in supporting the fieldwork needed to advance Bridled Tern monitoring and conservation.
BirdLife Northern Queensland warmly congratulates Jennifer on receiving the 2026 Graham Harrington Student Research Scholarship. We look forward to following the research as it develops and sharing Jennifer’s progress with supporters.
Watch this space.
