GPS Tracking Is For The Birds

As technology advances at light speed, it seems like everything is getting smaller, including GPS trackers. One of the smallest GPS trackers available today is no more than the size of two grains of brown rice.

With the benefit of size, GPS tracking is no longer only being used to track cars, fleet vehicles, our pets, or people. Researchers are now using GPS tracking on birds: not only to understand their migration habits, but to help prevent certain bird species from becoming extinct.

One such researcher is Nick Smith. Nick is an LSU student researcher on a a quest to learn where the bald eagles in his nearby Terrebonne Parish area go. It seems they disappear each year in June, July, and August.

Over the next two summers, Nick is attaching a GPS tracker device to 10 birds to find out where these Louisiana eagles are going. Because these species of birds were placed on the federal endangered-species list, the tracking will help to study their nesting success, population, and migrating behaviors.

So far, Nick has placed GPS transmitters on seven out of his goal of 10 birds.

Bald eagles aren’t the only species of birds to be tracked. Pheasants, cranes, and Cuckoo birds have had their share of big brother watching their daily flight patterns too.

Bird watchers and featured-creature enthusiasts have studied the behaviors and migratory patterns of various bird groups for years. Birds have always been of interest to man. They symbolize freedom, and are often used as symbols by great authors like Edgar Allen Poe in The Raven and William Faulkner in The Sound of Fury. There’s even a movie about bird watching: The Big Year, starring Steve Martin, Owen Wilson, and Jack Black.

And researchers and scientists have learned intriguing information from their studies. Yet, these observations have always had a drawback: how to keep taps on a particular bird. With the advent of smaller GPS tracking devices, scientists can now tag targeted, individual birds, and monitor their flight patterns in way that is more precise than every before.

Yet, perhaps what is most interesting about using GPS trackers to track birds is in its future application.  Will there be the potential to perform in-depth studies on animal-borne communicable diseases, like the avian bird flu?

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