Nest box monitoring and occupancy report app
Nest box programs are installed as offsets for removed hollows or as community projects, and someone has to check them: climb or use a pole camera, record what is inside, note damage, and decide whether the box needs repair or relocation. Councils and offset managers want occupancy rates by box design and target species, which means each inspection has to stay tied to a specific box over many years.
Built for councils running teams of roughly 3–50 inspectors.
Sample Nest box occupancy report
An illustrative excerpt. The site, readings and findings are fictional; the layout is yours to set.
Nest box occupancy report
Table 1 — Occupancy by box design, annual check
- Program
- Fictional Council nest box program, Parkland B
- Boxes inspected
- 48 of 50 (2 inaccessible)
- Inspection
- Pole camera, 8–10 September 2026
| Box design | Occupied / inspected | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Glider (rear entry) | 7 / 12 — sugar gliders in 6 | Note: Pass |
| Microbat | 3 / 15 — bats present | Note: Note |
| Parrot | 9 / 13 — 6 occupied by common mynas | Note: Pest use |
| Possum | 6 / 8 — 2 lids loose | Note: Repair |
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 nest box occupancy report where your template puts it.
Per box
- Box ID (linked register)
- Design
- Tree and height
- Aspect of entrance
Per inspection
- Inspection method
- Contents (empty, nest, eggs, animal)
- Species and number
- Pest species present
- Pole camera still
Maintenance
- Box condition
- Repair needed
- Relocate (yes / no)
How the nest box occupancy report gets built
Capture it once, offline
Your firm builds the nest box monitoring 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 nest box occupancy 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 nest box occupancy 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 every inspection stay tied to the same box for years?
- Boxes are a register, so each inspection references the stored box and the report can show its full occupancy history.
- Can we see occupancy rates by box design?
- Design is a field on the box record, so the report can group inspections by design and count occupied boxes against the number inspected.
- Can community volunteers fill in the inspections?
- They can be added as team members and given the form; their submissions land in the same register the ecologist reports from.
- Can a box be flagged for relocation without losing its history?
- Relocation updates the tree and height on the existing box record, so earlier inspections stay attached and the report notes when and why the box moved.
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
- Pre-clearance ecology surveysClearance survey report
- Revegetation monitoringPlanting survival report
- Seagrass monitoringSeagrass condition report
- Shorebird countsShorebird census report
- Threatened species monitoringSpecies monitoring report
- Turtle nesting patrolsNesting season report
- Bat call monitoringBat activity report
- Biodiversity offset monitoringOffset site report
Other disciplines
Rebuild your nest box occupancy 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.