1 quail egg was placed in each nest, and the nests were split equally between ground and arboreal locations. Ground nests were placed in, or at the base of trees, where each tree is more than 15m away from any other selected tree. Arboreal nests were mounted to trees using steel wire where necessary, and were all accessible via branches capable of supporting the weight of predators. No attempts were made to disguise, or hide the nests either at ground or arboreal levels. 4 nests were placed in the forest interior and the remaining 4 were placed on the forest edge. For the purposes of the pilot, forest edge was defined as within 10m of the edge of the forest, and forest interior was >100m away from any edge. Nests were considered to be predated if they were missing, broken or otherwise interfered with (e.g bite marks). Nests were examined daily for predation. The pilot study found no significant difference between ground and arboreal nests (χ2 = 0.20991, p = 0.6468) indicating the full study can use ground and arboreal nests, and that the arboreal nests are being predated.
Like the first pilot, each nest contained 1 quail egg, however half of the nests contained an additional plasticine egg. All other methods were identical to the first pilot
The pilot found a significant difference in predation rates between nests with and without the plasticine eggs (χ2 = 17.681, ρ < 0.0001), likely due to the olfactory cues the plasticine was emitting, indicating either a different material for artificial eggs should be used, or steps should be taken to reduce the smell. It should also be noted that every day of the trial, at least 1 plasticine egg was completely eviscerated preventing predator identification.