DuskWatch

At the Terek roosts, as the tide comes in.

The cohort activity. Stewards together at the Terek Sandpiper roosts as the in-coming dusk arrives, watching the birds settle.

What you can do here

Three things from this page

Field session

Start a session

Five-step recording form. Session header, time-block arrival counts, behaviour scans, flag observations, disturbance log. Records queue to the device until sync.

Open the form → Our results

What we have so far

Live during the season — sessions held, total Terek arrivals counted, disturbance events, flag observations. Switches to analytical figures at season end.

View Our results → Steward protocol

Read the protocol

Field protocol with method rationale, recording form fields, data flow, references. Print-friendly. The companion to the in-app form.

Read the protocol →
In one paragraph

What DuskWatch is

A single-season pilot study of Terek Sandpiper (Xenus cinereus) overnight roost use at the Kakadu Beach Constructed Roost (KBR), Pumicestone Passage. Stewards run dusk observation sessions from a fixed point at the roost edge under team-leader guidance. Methodology adapts the Whimbrel nocturnal-roost protocol of Sanders, Handmaker, Johnson and Senner (2021), with extensions for disturbance recording (Lilleyman et al. 2016), posture-state scoring (Ryeland et al. 2017, 2019) and barometric-pressure trend recording for the anticipatory-versus-reactive question.

The full picture is on /about-duskwatch. The Steward field protocol is at /duskwatch/protocol.

Partners

Who is involved

DuskWatch is delivered in collaboration with the BIEPA Shorebird Working Group, Jacobs Well Environmental Education Centre, and REF Environmental. Dr Micha Jackson (CSIRO) is approached as a proposed scientific collaborator. The Queensland Wader Study Group, the City of Moreton Bay, and Birds Queensland are briefed before fieldwork begins.

Why a Steward-led pilot Ng et al. (2026) in Journal of Applied Ecology identified the published evidence base for several common EAAF conservation actions as partial at best, and asked for regionally relevant research validating frontline interventions. DuskWatch is one such regionally specific record — Steward-collected, site-scaled, on a species and a roost the published literature has not closely examined. Site-scale records from Stewards can contribute to that evidence base, alongside the formal research the paper calls for, not in place of it. Read the panel →