I wanted to let area birders know about Cayuga Bird Club's Motus station at Myers Park, and the migratory birds we've detected there this season.
Motus tracking, which uses tiny radio transmitters attached to birds or other wildlife to follow their movements, depends on having an array of receiving stations to detect the tagged individual as it passes by. That information is then relayed to the Motus network, where it can be accessed by migration researchers throughout the international Motus network. Last Fall, Cayuga Bird Club voted to install a Motus station in southern Central New York, filling a gap in the array of Motus receivers. Bryant Dossman, a Cornell graduate student who studies migration, helped us build the tower and get the receiver up and running. The town of Lansing was very supportive in allowing us to locate the receiving tower at Myers Park. After putting up the tower in late October, 2019, we had our first detection -- of an American Woodcock -- on November 7. The bird had been detected just three hours earlier on the same evening at Amherst and Wolfe Islands in Ontario, about 150 miles north of us! 33 hours later, the bird was in North Carolina. You can see the map of this woodcock's migratory movements here: https://motus.org/data/track?tagDeploymentId=24936. This Fall, our Myers Point receiving station has detected six migratory birds: a nightjar (probably Common Nighthawk), Blackpoll Warbler, White-throated Sparrow, two Rusty Blackbirds, and an American Pipit. The blackbirds were tagged at L’Observatoire d’Oiseaux de Tadoussac, QC; one was detected on 10-25 and the second on 10-31 at Myers Point. These maps of these two blackbirds show remarkably similar trajectories. The two blackbirds were most recently detected by receivers in Northern Maryland that are 27 miles apart from one another. (Maryland detections on November 12 and November 6). https://motus.org/data/track?tagDeploymentId=30032 and https://motus.org/data/track?tagDeploymentId=22981. We've added a Motus page to our CBC website about birds detected at Myers Point: http://www.cayugabirdclub.org/motus. Please, check it out! It can be quite interesting to see the migratory maps for different species. We also provide instructions there for exploring our detections on the motus.org website. Pretty fun! Diane Morton Cayuga Bird Club -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
