MAINE SUNDAY TELEGRAM • September 22, 2024
With several billion birds migrating south, understanding the destination of birds is a daunting task. Banding birds is a tried-and-true technique but inefficient. For a bird banded in North America that winters in South America, the chances of capturing that banded bird in South America is slim. We now have techniques that do not require a marked bird to be recaptured. Satellite transmitters continue to be miniaturized so that even a small bird’s travels can be tracked from a computer desktop. The Motus Wildlife Tracking System, a project directed by Birds Canada, uses radio telemetry whose signals can be picked up by strategically placed radio antennas. Ultimately, the Motus team would like to have a dense network of antennas from North America to South America so that any tagged bird would be detected regularly on its migration. ~ Herb Wilson