Our first Swainson's!

As much fun as it is to catch lots of birds and band them, that's not really the reason Jaci (my boss) is here. Her Master's research is looking at movement of Swainson's Thrushes in terms of fat and age classes. Running a banding station is (theoretically) a great way to get access to "volunteers" for her study, and today we caught and radiotagged the first Swainson's Thrush of the season. The Swainson's Thrush will carry its radiotransmitter for a week or two before it falls off. Between now and then, we're hoping to pick up its signal via three fixed towers near the study site, tracking the bird by hand (in a car), and/or tracking the bird from a low-flying aircraft.

Here are the basic steps of this study:
1. Catch thrushes.
2. Attach radiotransmitters.
3. Listen for the radio signal and the figure out which way the bird flew!

Unfortunately, I forgot my camera today but here's a REVI we put a transmitter on last week (more reasons why we are putting transmitters on REVIs is coming in a later post).


The transmitters are sewn to a small piece of fabric and then glued directly to the bird. Our method uses both eyelash glue and superglue. Eyelash glue is applied to the center of the bird's back over the spine after the feathers have been cut away, and also applied to the fabric directly under the transmitter. We use superglue to hold down the edges of the fabric and has the advantages of extra strength and short drying time. (Eyelash glue is more flexible, but less strong.)
Jaci will go out this afternoon and program the radio towers to "listen" for the particular frequency of the radiotag on the thrush. The towers have 8 different receiving antennae, and by plotting the strength of the signal from each of these, we can tell which way the bird flies when it leaves the area. The underlying assumption is that certain birds will fly south across the Gulf to the Yucatan penninsula (where there are other towers that will listen for our birds), and other birds won't fly south.

Let's see if you can guess which birds we assume would fly south . . .