A hoot, a shriek and a gurgle: they're the unusual sounds of yellow-bellied gliders that soar between the trees in far north Queensland.
Over the next three months, a series of 'song meters' will record their every sound.
A group of ten volunteers trekked into the Windsor Tablelands last week to install the solar powered devices, which will record 12 hours of audio each night.
The vulnerable Petaurus australis is a particular sub-species of gliders only found in wet sclerophyll forests in far north Queensland and is distinct from its southern counterpart.
Project manager Rupert Russel said the nocturnal marsupials usually made several calls each night and the recordings would help them establish if, and where, they were present.
"And then if we put them up next year and… the year after that and then if we're all alive we'll put them up five years after that," he said.
"In that way, we can register how their population is performing."
Animals in danger
The species as a whole was listed as near threatened, but Mr Russel said the north Queensland glider populations were more vulnerable because of drought, fire and climate change.
He said this project allowed them to monitor the population in absentia.
"These gliders live in family groups and the family groups occupy particular home ranges and our song meters are put up, far enough apart … so we'll be able to establish whether the groups are still present or absent," he said.
He said there were other known locations where groups of gliders had disappeared, and this research would help establish if a similar decline was happening in the region.
The Trek
To install the 16 meters, the group split in two, targeting different parts of the forest where gliders were known to live.
The volunteers stayed out for three nights, in what Mr Russel described as "very lucky" conditions.
Amanda Kaiwi was also part of the team and said putting the song meters up required climbing up a ladder and attaching them to trees, six metres up.
"It's 50 kilometres from the Mulligan Highway and it goes through a cattle station which is all dust and then you start going up into the mountains and come into rainforest," she said.
"Then just before our camp … you come into this open eucalypt forest where the gliders are."
Listening back
The recording cards will be collected in September and Ms Kaiwi will lead the analysis.
"I know what the glider calls look like on a spectrogram, so I'll be training a certain amount of volunteers," she said.
"We'll be going through these SD cards which is hours and hours of work, but we're only a citizen science program."
She said gliders didn't always call every night, which was why the meters had to be in place for so long.
"So, we're only doing presence and absence over the three year period," she said.
The project was funded through a $35,000 grant from the Queensland Government.
Mr Russel said when the project hopefully continued next year, each of the song meters would be returned to the same trees.
A key species
Ms Kaiwi said gathering this kind of data was vital in preserving and protecting the habitat of gliders and other plants and animals.
She said they also only fed off one other species of Eucalyptus, known as red mahogany, which was favoured for logging.
"Without these gliders cutting into the mahogany to bring out the sap, a lot of other animals will also die as a result."
