As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Friday 10 June 2016

'Backpack birds' return with data to solve mystery of purple martin population decline


Nature Canada's Purple Martin Project is part of an international effort to restore declining population

By Chloé Fedio with files from All In A Day, CBC News Posted: Jun 04, 2016 6:00 AM ET Last Updated: Jun 04, 2016 10:07 AM ET

Purple martins equipped with tiny GPS backpacks have returned to Ottawa from as far as Brazil with data Nature Canada researchers hope will help solve the mystery of the bird's declining population.

Nature Canada conservation manager Ted Chesky was part of a team that extracted the backpacks from the migrational birds at the Nepean Sailing Club in May where the birds live in individual apartment-like man-made roosts. 

"We put specialized traps just on the holes where we were pretty sure we had backpack birds," Chesky told Alan Neal on CBC Radio's All In A Day on Monday.

After the birds are trapped, their itty-bitty tracking devices, no bigger than a thumbnail, are removed, he said.

"Basically, there's a little harness, a little tether that goes around their body and we just clip it off with scissors. It comes off and we measure the bird and a few things like that then let them go," Chesky said.

Nature Canada's Purple Martin Project is part of an international effort by researchers and naturalists to restore the declining population. A thread-like antenna on the so-called backpack tracks the migration of a bird.

"With the geo-locators, we learn how fast they can do it and how much time they take at different points along the way, which is very interesting," he said, explaining the journey south is slow but the return north is quick in the spring.

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