by Lisa D. Mickey
The campus at Marine Discovery Center became one of Florida’s newest Motus tracking stations on August 13, expanding the North American network and enhancing Florida’s east coast range used to track movements of such flying species as tagged birds, bats and insects.
Motus stations utilize radio telemetry through specialized receivers for tracking and allow scientists to identify and monitor such things as migration routes, migration stopover locations and wintering sites for a variety of species. According to its website, Motus is a “collaborative research network led by Birds Canada” and “partners with scientists and organizations across the globe.”
Once the system is operational, tagged species passing within eight miles of the tracking station are pinged and recorded onto a central database. And that database is available to all who want to know which species are traveling through their region or are curious about the animal’s point of origin, and ultimately, their final destination.
On a steamy August day, Adam Smith, the U.S. Motus Director with American Bird Conservancy, and Garrett Rhyne, Southeast Motus Coordinator for the American Bird Conservancy, were busy working on the north side of MDC’s campus. The two installed a receiving antenna on top of a donated utility pole, as well as the station’s necessary hardware and software to launch the station.
The project was initiated by the Southeast Volusia Audubon Society (SEVAS), which uses MDC as its home base. SEVAS and MDC staff met with Motus and, after many iterations of the proposed station, the new location was finalized and installed.
Here is what we learned about the new Motus station on installation day on the MDC campus:
Why is something like this important and how do you choose your sites?
Adam – Technology has really come a long way, but it still limits us in tracking the smallest individuals. When you have migratory bird populations for a variety of species that aren’t doing well, you have to understand everything that’s going on throughout their full annual cycle, which can span continents. That’s really hard to do with larger technology, which is where Motus comes in. It’s really miniaturized tracking technology that can help us understand the movements of these small animals – small birds, butterflies and bats across continental scales in a way that we never could do before and that other technology doesn’t open up to us.
What does Motus stand for?
Adam – It’s not an acronym. It’s just a Latin word for movement, which is the crux of what the program is trying to address – migrations and connectivity.
Are the creatures you detect animals that have been banded?
Adam – This network only detects animals that are wearing the miniature transmitters – little radios – that are compatible with the Motus system. Just a normal band won’t be detected. These transmitter tags emit every few seconds a low-power radio pulse into the environment and these Motus stations serve as the ears of the network, listening around the clock for the animals flying by with those transmitters.
How many Motus stations are in the United States?
Adam – There are a couple thousand stations in North America.
And why did you want to have a station here in New Smyrna Beach?
Garrett – We have been working on the Florida network for a while and having a continuous network of receivers along the Atlantic coast is important for a lot of shorebird species and songbird species that use this as an Atlantic Flyway. This was in an area that had a big gap. The Southeast Audubon chapter reached out to us. We met with them and Marine Discovery Center and discussed bringing a transmitter here. It just fell into place. We have been traveling for three weeks now across Florida and down to the Florida Keys, working on a bunch of different stations. This was on the path and we were able to make it work.
What are the next closest stations to New Smyrna Beach?
Adam – South of here would be Vero Beach and Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge. North of here is around Jacksonville.
Will these stations stand up to hurricane conditions?
Garrett – We definitely have to make sure they are structurally stable. Some of the older stations weren’t as weather-proof, so we’ve had to go fix them, but everything we have installed here will be stable. There is a weather-proof case and we use galvanized steel pipe as the mast for the antennas. Of course, there are hurricanes that can topple buildings, but these can survive regular tropical storms. We build them to last for a long time.
How tall is the pole that serves as the base of your antenna?
Garrett – The local utility company [New Smyrna Beach Utility Commission] installed the pole, which is about 12 feet tall. It gets the antenna high enough. Luckily, we’re surrounded by a mangrove forest, so we don’t have to be too high to be above tree canopy.
Who pays for these stations?
Garrett – Motus operates in a very collaborative way in which there are a lot of partners. Any researchers across the Americas who use the tags are all using the same network, so a lot of times the stations are funded by larger regional grants. For this station, there are individual groups, such as the Audubon group here, that are very interested in supporting it. The Southeast Volusia Audubon actually held a Bird-a-Thon to raise the funds to buy the equipment for this station, which cost around $4,500 to $5,000.
Does someone come check on the stations to make sure they are operational?
Garrett – Ideally, we have partners who can check to make sure antennas haven’t fallen off. The way this works is, our receiver will be connected to the Internet so that it automatically and continuously uploads data. We can monitor from our base in Athens, Ga., and if we see that it starts to disconnect, we can come check it out. It’s great that we have partners like Audubon and MDC to keep an eye on it in case there is anything physical that we can repair.
Can the data collected from this station be viewed by the public?
Garrett – Yes, and that’s a big part of it, especially when we are installing a station at an environmental education center, such as Marine Discovery Center. All of this data is public and when it goes to Motus.org, anyone can see it. You’ll be able to see what birds have passed over and you’ll be able to see their entire tracts of where they were tagged and everywhere they were detected. The idea is that this station will help the public learn about all of the birds that are passing through and using this area as they connect from such places as the Caribbean to maybe warblers flying to New England.
Are there species of special concern that you are really hoping to detect?
Adam – What is being tagged and what are wearing Motus tags at any point in time is a result of what researchers or land managers are interested in, so it really varies. Most of the birds that get tagged are tagged because they are a species of concern and we just want to learn more about their migrations, their connectivity and their survival rate. Other species are tagged because they are easy to catch in large numbers and we use them as a vessel to understand migration phenomenon more generally. It’s a mixed bag of that approach.
Does using a Motus network encourage researchers to use Motus-tagged processes?
Adam – That’s part of the hope. If you can develop a network that is long-lived and robust and able to answer a wide variety of questions, then you can entice other researchers to use that network for the species they are studying. That’s something that we’re hoping to explore more, particularly in Florida. We have to find collaborators who are interested in finding species of concern in the state of Florida. And we hope that they will recognize what Motus can contribute and they’ll want to become a partner. It’s a very collaborative effort.
Southeast Volusia Audubon chapter member Robert Merideth served as the group’s Bird-a-Thon coordinator to raise funds for the Motus station and was present for the August installation. Here’s what he thought about the culmination of SEVAS’s efforts:
This must be a special day for members of SEVAS who pushed for this monitoring station?
Robert – We are absolutely excited. Adam and Garrett are contributing their labor in-kind to this installation. That’s a cost that a lot of stations have to provide on their own. We had a great opportunity because they were here working on the Florida network and it worked out to get a station installed here.
How do you think Audubon chapter members will be involved with this local monitoring station?
Robert – We are exploring ways to do that. I think there is a public interest in understanding what the possibilities are with data collection. There will be a curiosity that people have with certain types of species, whether they are warblers, hummingbirds, shorebirds or other species that get tagged. We are just learning the possibilities of what this will become.
Will the Motus station become a part of MDC’s on-campus bird walks when they resume this fall?
Robert – We’ll bring the bird walks over here to this site and have a “Motus Moment” in which we’ll be able to talk about this station, the network and its connection with a lot of species that use Florida as a migratory corridor. Those birds may be overwintering or breeding in Florida and we’ll be able to talk about these visitors to Florida. And of course, there’s potential to talk about other species, such as insects and bats that are tagged by Motus transmitters.
With the ongoing data collection at this station, there certainly will be an educational component available to everyone who is interested.
Robert – Yes, and once we talk about migration, we can show people which species are moving through here at different times of year because we will have data. We will be able to talk about those species and put them in a habitat and ecosystem context. There are a lot of possibilities on how to use this little, old-fashioned TV antenna for educational purposes to discuss bird species protection and conservation in ways that we might not otherwise have been able to do.
To learn more or to see what species are moving through your area, check out Motus.org
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