Snowy Owls' NYC Visit Reveals Migration Habits

by Shannon Hall, Staff Writer | March 11, 2015 07:07am ET

This was another banner winter for snowy owl sightings in New York City. At least seven have been spotted since December, typically in wide-open areas (like by coastlines or even near airport runways) that resemble the birds' tundra homes.

While it may sound strange to see snowy owls in New York City, the sightings aren't all that unusual, experts say. Snowy owls typically migrate as far south as Florida, but rarely are so many seen in a single winter. This year is simply a continuation of last year's great migration, when 22 owls were spotted in New York City alone.

Now, for the second year in a row, researchers are reaping the benefits of this migration, spending long, cold hours in the field, live-trapping the birds in order to later follow their movements via GPS.

Continued ...

Tracking Albatross Movement With GPS, Weather, Terrain Data

April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Combining GPS tracking data with satellite weather and terrain information, scientists are creating a fresh look at animal movement with a big data approach.

The new Environmental-Data Automated Track Annotation (Env-DATA), detailed in the journal Movement Ecology, can track millions of data points and serve over 100 scientists simultaneously.

“This is a powerful tool for understanding how weather and land forms affect migration patterns,” co-founder Dr. Roland Kays, a zoologist with North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, said. “Ultimately it will help us answer global questions about how changes to our planet affect animal populations and movement.”

Continued

Vultures Foraging Far and Wide Face a Poisonous Future

Jan. 30, 2013 — A first ever study of the range and habits of white-backed vultures across southern Africa shows that they often shun national parks, preferring to forage further afield on private farmland.

This behaviour and their tendency to scavenge in groups, means that vultures risk encountering dead cattle that have been administered veterinary drugs that are poisonous to them, or even poisoned carcasses intended to control other carnivores such as jackals.

The research, using Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite transmitters to track the movements of adolescent vultures, is published in the journal PLOS ONE.

The white-backed vulture is a widespread but declining species in Africa and it is now listed as endangered. In India, several vulture species are on the verge of extinction due to accidental poisoning from cattle carcasses that contain anti-inflammatory drugs administered by farmers. These drugs are non-lethal to cattle yet fatal to vultures. There is a concern that these drugs could become more widely used in Africa.

Vultures prefer to feed in savannah grassland habitats and away from other competing carnivores, such as lions, and the new study shows that the birds will go to considerable lengths to find food, crossing multiple state boundaries, with each bird on average ranging across an area twice the size of England.

Continued:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130130184314.htm