SOC and Tay Ringing Group launch pioneering bird tracking initiative set to reveal migration secrets
We're excited to share details of an innovative new bird tracking project which has recently been launched, with the aim of helping to demystify some of the secrets surrounding bird migration.
The project, a partnership between the SOC and Tay Ringing Group, uses the Motus Wildlife Tracking System – a global network of receivers which detect birds fitted with Motus tags. It is hoped that the data from this will help ornithologists address new questions about bird migration.
The study, which is based in the East Neuk of Fife, looks at the movements of Rock Pipits, a common coastal bird widely distributed around Scotland’s rocky shores. While the birds that breed in Scotland can be seen year-round, numbers are bolstered in the winter as the resident breeding population is joined by migrants from Scandinavia.
A team of licensed bird ringers from Tay Ringing Group have so far tagged two of these birds at Crail (Fife) - the first ever birds to be fitted with Motus tags in Scotland. Each tiny Motus tag, weighing as little as 0.3g (less than a paperclip!), sends out its own unique signal which can be detected by Motus receivers up to 10km away, allowing the movements of individual birds to be tracked.
Rock Pipit being fitted with a Motus tag
In addition to Rock Pipits, the three receivers set up by the project have the potential to pick up other birds fitted with Motus tags, which have been tagged elsewhere. Already the project's receiver at Crail has picked up the first foreign Motus-tagged bird to be detected in Scotland – a Blackbird which travelled over 500km in a single night to reach Fife from Norway.
Map from motus.org showing the movement of the tagged Blackbird from Norway to Fife
While the Fife receivers are currently the only Motus receivers in Scotland, the partners hope that the Fife project will encourage others to make use of this new technology and expand the growing global receiver network to better monitor bird migration.
Motus data are freely accessible and available for research, conservation and education purposes. Members of the public can explore interactive maps showing Motus receiver stations and projects around the world, as well as the birds that the receivers are detecting, online at motus.org.
Images: Rock Pipit © Bob Hamilton; Rock Pipit being fitted with a Motus tag © Les Hatton; Map © motus.org
