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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