This Topic has been set up to follow the Spring 2012 migration, and summer activities, of satellite tracked ospreys, excluding Rothes and Tore from Loch Garten, who are followed on this thread.
It replaces this earlier thread, Satellite Tracked Ospreys (non-LG) Aug 2011 - Feb 2012.
Roy Dennis web-site has been totally revised with new layouts etc. No updates on info from earlier posts, but for future reference links to all the birds he is currently tracking (Beatrice, Morven, Red8T, Rothiemurchus), and those from birds who have lost contact, can all be accessed from this page.
What is the point of a tracker if you can not use it from day one.??????????
"Birds are, quite simply, little miracles - and as such they require care and consideration."
Magnus Ullman
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Limpy said: What is the point of a tracker if you can not use it from day one.??????????
The trackers are used to gather long term data about the migration tracks etc. To save battery life they are set to transmit data in batches, sometimes up to seven days apart, but sometimes every 2-3 days. (I believe that changing the intervals between data batches are pre-programmed into the units, so that they transmit more frequently during migration periods, but less frequently when the birds are resident in Africa)
They are not designed to be actively interrogated to answer "Where is this bird now?" which is what you would need to find the missing juveniles. Building that capability into the tracker would be possible, but would make the unit larger and heavier, and would therefore present an increased risk of hindering the bird in some way.
Limpy
You CAN use it from day one ( though with a juvenile tagged in the nest , it won't produce meaningful data until your bird fledges); that's not the issue.
Satellite tracking devices are not intended to show where a bird is "right now", but where it has been in the recent past. Because the data has to be uploaded to the satellite and then downloaded, there is always a time lag. This can vary depending on the settings the user has requested from the manufacturer, but is not normally less than 24 hours.
I think some people are confusing satellite technology, with the kind of radio tracking which was used to keep track of the birds translocated to Rutland Water in the early days after their release. This does give the bird's position in "real time" - however this technology is no use for tracking birds which migrate, as it only has a range of a few miles.
Sue C Not sure if you were following the very first Roy Dennis satellite tracking back in 1999. It was the of the now famous Green J (codenamed S06).
They set transmissions to start about 25th August. When the first transmission came through she was already in Spain and that was it for the winter., They had discovered that Green J was a Spanish sort of girl.
Tiger Signature
Interseting info AG SUE TIGER Thank you
Many thanks to AG SUE and Tiger for your reply's and I do here you.
But surely if you are going to fit a tracker you should be able to find a bird any time any place and any where not just when they migrate, How many chicks do we lose before they migrate surely all data would be useful. Do they not need to rethink this.
The data is recorded on the tracker every hour . Then when the satellite is visible to the bird it gets uploaded to the satellite. It gets downloaded every few days at this time.
The data has to be processed and plotted when it arrives.
I am not sure if you can ask for an emergency download although Dyfi last yeast seemed to imply that had done just that possibly when they were worried about Dulas on the windmill in the English channel.
So satellite tracking is far from being real time yet and probably never will be unless they got a lot more satellites.
There is also the matter of £££££
Limpy, I believe it's a case of size; additional functionality would require more hardware, therefore more weight & bulk. The trackers would also require a far larger battery as well if they were to constantly transmit data showing their whereabouts.
Thanks Tiger and Vespa . I do realise that things cost. But with technology improving all the time and being made smaller surely this can be made small and light enough.
And what happens in the UK must be as important as what happens when they migrate.