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Land & Wildlife

Limited season · Selective capacity

Know where key species are calling — and how to manage for them

Where are they? How are populations doing? What should you change on the ground? Acoustic listening turns calling into decisions — with the health of your land as the through-line.

We take a limited number of properties each listening season. Built for landowners, land managers, and agencies who need practical answers: where key birds are on the property, how populations are trending, and how to manage habitat with that data — not just detections. Typical fit: 100+ acres, public or private working lands.

Species insight

Actionable species insights for management


Continuous acoustic records turn calling activity into actionable insights — when key game and non-game birds are present, how activity shifts across the season, and where to focus habitat work so management effort actually lands.

Confirmed Northern Bobwhite whistle calls across monitoring stations — a time-lapse of spatial calling activity showing where bobwhite are present and how intensity shifts day to day.
Male Northern Bobwhite on a fence post
Northern Bobwhite — Photo: panza.rayada / CC BY-SA 3.0 (via Wikimedia Commons / Panoramio).

Hear bobwhite calls

Spectrogram showing bobwhite call frequencies over time
Spectrogram of bobwhite calls

Map covey and whistle calling for bobwhite — including survival and rebound signals after hard winters — so cover, food-plot, burn, roost, and access decisions land where activity actually concentrates.

The same listening network follows gobbling for wild turkey and drumming and calling for ruffed grouse — timing and location that help focus habitat work where birds actually use the property.

Hear a turkey gobble

Soundscape view

Broader biodiversity — actionable signals for habitat decisions


The same listening network that tracks management targets also reads the wider bird community. Long-term calling patterns reveal presence, absence, and change — actionable signals for habitat quality that occasional morning surveys can miss.

Male indigo bunting perched on a branch

Indigo Bunting is a clear example: multi-year daily detections show seasonal calling peaks and year-to-year shifts — insight you can use to judge whether edge, shrub, and early-successional habitat is working beyond a single target species.

Photo: Tyler Savitski / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Avian Activity chart: total calls for Indigo Bunting over multiple years
Avian Activity — Total Calls | Indigo Bunting. Long-term calling patterns show seasonal presence and year-to-year change.

Management meaning

From sound to action on the ground


Detections alone are not a plan. We translate calling into actionable insights — where activity concentrates, how seasons compare, and what to do next on the ground.

Year-to-year context keeps you from over-reading a quiet season or missing a rebound. Comparing covey calling tops across seasons separates habitat signal from noise — so management decisions rest on real patterns, not a single bad week.

Comparison of covey calling tops in 2024 versus 2025 — detections much stronger in 2025
Covey calling tops, 2024 vs 2025 — detections much stronger in 2025. Side-by-side season comparison that informs habitat and management decisions on the ground.

Why this method holds up


Scientific advantages of continuous acoustic monitoring — actionable insights so your management decisions rest on stronger evidence.

Helicopter surveys

~26%

Next-best option typically achieves a detection threshold around 26%.

That means acoustic monitoring can reveal meaningful population trends earlier, with substantially lower cost and disturbance than aerial surveys. Precision still depends on study design, habitat, and season — and results on any one property vary.

Selected examples


Results vary by property, season, habitat, and effort. Outcomes are not guaranteed.

Private landowners, Mid-Atlantic

Annual monitoring contract

Tracked bobwhite quail survival after a brutal winter ice storm

Also maps turkey calling activity across the property

Delaware Department of Fish & Wildlife

Wildlife management areas

Bobwhite and songbird presence monitoring

Presence and activity baselines across public land units

Rolling Plains Quail Research Ranch

Texas Rolling Plains · two-year acoustic dataset

Bobwhite population change analyzed with greater precision than other methods used there

Longer listening windows reveal trends occasional surveys miss

How we will help you


We run the full listening season end to end — and turn it into actionable insights you can manage from:

What happens next?

  1. Submit this short fit form.
  2. We text or call if there’s a fit to schedule a consult.
  3. If we take the property, onboarding & monitoring kickoff.

Led by Dr. Luke Macaulay, Ph.D. — Extension Specialist at UC Berkeley and the University of Maryland, where he earned tenure, then went all-in on entrepreneurship building Land & Wildlife. Three years proving these methods on a ~1,000-acre working farm (research partnership).

Property fit form


All fields are required. Fit requests are reviewed personally. We only move forward with landowners, land managers, and agencies ready to invest in deployments starting at a minimum of $10,000 and prepared to start within 30 days — capacity is limited.

Typical fit: 100+ acres
Are you ready to invest in deployments with a minimum of $10,000?
Deployments start at $10,000 (minimum $10k deployments).
Are you ready to start within 30 days?

Request received

Thank you. We’ll text or call if there’s a fit to schedule a short consult. Capacity is limited, so not every property is accepted this season.

Questions in the meantime? luke@landwildlife.com