Tracking bird migration: what technology is out there and what can we do with it

Measuring movement and behavior can greatly improve the conservation and management of species and their habitats. For four decades VHF radio tracking has offered a much deeper insight into avifauna than binoculars and a notebook can offer. Since the turn of the century, new technologies have reduced in size and power consumption to the extent that they are becoming suitable for use on progressively smaller species. Remote telemetry via radio, cell phone or satellite removes or reduces the need to recapture animals. The cost and difficulty of fieldwork in remote areas is dramatically reduced, often only needed to deploy the technology. Tracking highly-migratory or dispersing species becomes a reality where it was difficult-to-impossible using beeper radio tracking. Improved location accuracy and reduced power consumption allow much finer spatial and temporal scale studies to be conducted. For small migratory species, the Motus Wildlife Tracking System provides an international collaborative research network that uses a coordinated array of automated logging radio-receivers to track the movement and behavior of small flying organisms. On the other hand, Geolocators and Store on Board GPS provide a solution for small migratory species that can be recaptured after a long term study. For bigger migratory species, GPS with remote download and PTT Satellite tags can provide a solution. However, the challenge of a wider range of options is the difficulty in selecting the most appropriate technology for a particular study. In this talk we look at the different technologies and discuss how they can be used for migratory birds no matter what their size is.