Radio telemetry

During migration birds are highly dependent on a number of decisions in order to successfully reach their wintering area and to return to their breeding grounds. In order to study behaviors and decision making in free-flying migrants we constructed an automatic radio telemetry system on the Falsterbo peninsula during 2009.

By following free-flying birds in Falsterbo we are hoping to get a better understanding of a number of migratory behaviors and to get an insight in what decisions the birds make under certain circumstances such as time of day, special weather conditions or availability of different orientation cues.  The possibility to combine the telemetry studies with other methods, such as caged orientation experiment and analysis of stable isotopes, additionally increase the opportunities and this information could provide unprecedented insight into the behavior of migrants during stopover, the importance of access to compass cues and departure decisions.
 
The radio satellite telemetry station is used in the following project:

Simultaneous tracking

Simultaneous tracking

This system uses coded transmitters which enables us to track up to several hundred birds simultaneously at a single frequency and to individually identify them by the pulse rate (code) of the transmitter. The smallest available transmitters to date weigh 0.29 g, allowing us to track birds weighing as little as ~6 g, if keeping the transmitters weigh below the recommended 5% of the body mass of the bird. These transmitters have an average lifetime of about three weeks, which is sufficient to track migratory birds that rarely stay for longer periods at a stopover site.