Hi everyone! I am hoping to gather a little advice from this amazing community. I am a graduate student at Rutgers University and will be using passive acoustic monitoring in salt marshes in the mid-Atlantic USA to establish a baseline of bird communities (including indicator species such as the eastern black rail and saltmarsh sparrow) in marshes that will be undergoing restoration. These marshes are in a microtidal environment and are very sensitive to flooding and rising sea levels. As a result, these areas have experienced large amounts of ponding, vegetation die off, and are in serious need of restoration to regain elevation capital that salt marsh grasses need to get a foothold. Much of these areas I am working in have converted from salt marsh to mudflat. Thus, they will be receiving sediment through beneficial use of dredge material and will hopefully revegetate, providing habitat for marsh breeding species. I'll be using passive acoustic monitoring to evaluate metrics of biological diversity and will be doing indicator species detections. I am also considering pairing it with camera trap deployments for wading bird communities. These birds aren't vocalizing as frequently as the breeding passerines, so they are largely lost in the recordings. However, being that these mudflat areas attract wading birds, we know their populations will likely change over time with restoration. I would love to capture this shift. Does anyone have any suggestions for what camera trap model to use? I have used Reconyx in the past (minimally), but we are operating on a more Bushnell budget. I am thinking I'll have to set up a schedule to take photos at a regular interval and then leverage YOLO or some algorithm to help with detections. I imagine most of the birds will not trigger the motion sensor, so that is why I'm thinking of regular photos or videos. Does this seem super outlandish? Do you have any suggestions?
 

TL;DR: I’m a grad student studying marsh bird communities in mid-Atlantic USA salt marshes undergoing restoration (using dredge sediment). I’ll use passive acoustic monitoring for breeding birds, but also want to track wading birds using camera traps since they’re hard to detect in audio. Any recommendations for budget-friendly camera trap models (cheaper than Reconyx)? I’m considering using Bushnell and taking scheduled photos/video, plus YOLO-based detection. Suggestions?