Frog census and survey report app
Frog surveys happen at night, in the wet, often at the edge of a pond with a headtorch: call identification at listening stations, visual encounter searches along margins, tadpole dip-netting. Weather matters more than for almost any other group, so the report has to show the survey ran on nights when the target species would be calling. Hygiene between sites matters too, because chytrid fungus travels on boots.
Built for ecologists running teams of roughly 3–50 inspectors.
Sample Frog census report
An illustrative excerpt. The site, readings and findings are fictional; the layout is yours to set.
Frog census report
Table 2 — Nocturnal call surveys, Wetland 3
- Site
- Fictional Lakes Estate, constructed wetland 3
- Survey nights
- 3, 5 and 12 December 2025
- Hygiene
- Boots and nets disinfected between wetlands
| Night | Conditions / species calling | Survey valid |
|---|---|---|
| 3 Dec | 22 °C, light rain; striped marsh frog, eastern dwarf tree frog | Survey valid: Valid |
| 5 Dec | 24 °C, humid after storm; green and golden bell frog heard (3 males) | Survey valid: Valid — listed |
| 12 Dec | 15 °C, dry and windy; no calls | Survey valid: Sub-optimal |
Fields captured on site
Your firm builds the form in-app, so these are a starting point rather than a fixed schema. Every field is captured on the device, with or without signal, and lands in the frog census report where your template puts it.
Per night
- Wetland or station (linked)
- Air and water temperature
- Rainfall in past 24 hours
- Wind and moon
- Hygiene completed (yes / no)
Per record
- Species
- Detection (call, sighting, tadpole)
- Number or call abundance class
- Audio recording
- Photo
Habitat
- Water depth
- Emergent vegetation cover
- Predatory fish observed
Standards the report works to
- Commonwealth survey guidelinesSurvey guidelines for Australia’s threatened frogs
- The timing, weather and effort guidance a frog survey is assessed against.
- NSW frog hygiene protocolHygiene protocol for the control of disease in frogs
- The disinfection procedure between sites that the report records as followed.
Load the standards you hold into your reference library and the drafted prose is written against them rather than against a general model.
How the frog census report gets built
Capture it once, offline
Your firm builds the frog survey form in-app — 25 field types, nesting repeatable groups, compound AND/OR visibility rules, reusable modules and calculated fields. Field capture works with no signal: jobs, forms, photos, notes and audio all queue in an idempotent outbox that only clears once the server confirms receipt.
Link it to your sites, transects and plots
Enter sites, transects and plots once, as a register. Every one of your species observations and survey events then points at a stored row rather than a name somebody typed — and the links survive a disconnected device.
Render your own template
The frog census report renders into the Word template you already use — your letterhead, your section order, your clause library — with conditionals, loops over repeats, composable sub-templates and photo grids.
Reviewed before it leaves
You write the review framework: a checklist of what a frog census report must contain, plus the prose standards you would mark a junior against. Link it to a report template and it runs every time that template renders. Each finding comes back graded info, minor or major, quoting the sentence at fault, and a person accepts or dismisses every one.
Because the structured submission behind the report is held too, the review is a comparison rather than a proofread: The report concludes no threatened species were recorded; the survey event on Transect 3 carries an observation that says otherwise.
Checks a ecology framework usually carries
- Survey effort described meets the guideline for the species being assessed
- Every species in the results table is carried through to the discussion
- Weather, season and access limitations are recorded, not left implied
- Each approval or offset condition is addressed explicitly
Questions
- Can we record a call on the device as evidence?
- Audio recording works offline on the device and attaches to the job, so a call can be kept alongside the record it supports.
- Can a cold, dry night be flagged as not counting toward effort?
- A visibility rule can ask for a validity judgement when conditions fall outside your method, and the report can separate valid nights from the rest.
- Can we prove hygiene was done at every site?
- Make hygiene a required field on each site visit, and the report lists it per site rather than as a single blanket statement.
What this is not
Worth knowing before you book a demo, so neither of us wastes the half hour.
- Not field-service dispatch. No timesheets, no parts, no inventory. Scheduling exists to get an inspector to a site.
- No signature capture. If your deliverable has to carry a signed sign-off on the artefact itself, this is not the tool yet.
- Field capture is what works offline — jobs, forms, photos, notes and audio. Reports, chat, scheduling and the inbox need a connection.
- No client portal. Reports go out as a file or a password-protected link.
Other ecology work we cover
- Bat call monitoringBat activity report
- Biodiversity offset monitoringOffset site report
- Bird utilisation surveysBird survey report
- Camera trap programsCamera trap data report
- Coral reef surveysReef health report
- Fauna spotter catcher logsSpotter catcher shift report
- Fauna surveysFauna assessment report
- Fish surveysFish assemblage report
Other disciplines
Rebuild your frog census report in SurveyThanks
Bring the Word template you already send clients. If you are coming off another field-forms tool, a filled report can be uploaded, read field by field, and re-rendered into your template.