Tracking system gives wings to migration research

By Alejandra Pulido-Guzman - Lethbridge Herald on January 3, 2023.

Herald photo by Alejandra Pulido-Guzman Shane Roersma, a wildlife biologist and biological sciences instructor at Lethbridge College, discusses the newly acquired technology to track birds with lab technician and equipment room manager, Jonathan Friesen, and how they will harness it on robins to track them with the system installed in the roof of the cousins building.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDapulido@lethbridgeherald.com

The School of Environmental Sciences at Lethbridge College will be able to track the flightpaths of a group of robins early next year, thanks to new technology acquired by the college.

Earlier this year the college installed a Motus Wildlife Tracking System in the Cousins building. Motus is an international collaborative research network that uses telemetry, the automatic measurement and wireless transmission of data from remote sources, to facilitate research and education on the ecology and conservation of migratory animals.

The system installed at the college is one of only four systems of its kind in the province.

Lab technician and equipment room manager for the environmental science program, Jonathan Friesen said the system works by tracking nano tags that transmit a radio signal to the system.

“They come in various sizes and are all tuned to specific frequencies that our radio system picks up. They have a built-in battery and an infrared on/off switch so you can turn them on with a lifespan of two years,” said Friesen.

He said they put the nano tags on birds by harnessing them through their legs and letting them rest on the top of their bodies since they are only three percent of the weight of the bird, and by being placed on the top, they are out of the way, allowing the bird to fly unrestricted.

Wildlife biologist and Biological Sciences instructor, Shane Roersma, said he will have his ornithology and zoology class banding birds over the spring.

“Normally I don’t target robins but that’s the kind of species that we want to actually put these radios on, so this year will be looking for capturing robbins. It will be part of our regular operations where I teach the students how to band birds, but I will be fixing some of these nano tags on them,” said Roersma.

He said robins are good candidates to follow and he hopes they can obtain information on migratory pathways specific to their species.

Roersma said they have purchased 10 nano tags and he is hoping to use them all, but he might save some for the fall.

“If I put all 10 out in the springtime, let’s say mid-April, potentially they’ll all leave, which is fine because we still get all that information when they come back through, if they come back through here,” said Roersma.

He said the neat thing about having the specialized receiver allows them to have their students track the birds during reproductive season.

“Basically figure out where they’re nesting around here, potentially figure out how many young they are producing, if they initiate one or two nests, so our students can learn a lot of reproductive information,” said Roersma.

He said this is a really big collaboration project.

“Even though this is our tag that we purchased for this bird and that’s the research subject for us, somebody else can pick up that in terms of their particular station and they can access that data and they can figure out what’s going on,” said Roersma.

Friesen said that tracking wildlife is not a new thing, he said biologists have been doing it for years, but in a different way.

“Historically telemetry you have to go out with the radio, and you have to listen to the beep yourself as a biologist and you would record that information. Ours is passive, it sits on a building actively listening for birds to fly by,” said Friesen.

He said it is a relatively old technology but the ways to implement it is very new, because the data that has been passively recorded is now being uploaded to a worldwide network where it is connecting the dots, showcasing a flightpath.

Information on the flightpaths of hundreds of birds across the globe is available for the public to view as part of an overall effort to share migratory data. There are more than 1,550 Motus receiver stations currently operating in 34 countries across five continents.

The flightpath of a Swainson’s thrush that had been tagged in Whistler, B.C. and was detected by the college’s system in September can be viewed at https://motus.org/data/tracktagDeploymentId=41901

Follow @APulidoHerald on Twitter