Hello Birdie Tracking migrating shorebirds
balancing nature
WALKING a coastal
barrier island at
the end of July
2022, a visitor near
the mud flats notices a plump little
bird with a long beak and short legs.
When the shorebird scurries away, the
human gives it no more thought. It is
doubtful they knew this was a short-billed
dowitcher, which had flown
2,000 miles to the North Carolina
coast from where it was tagged by
biologists just a month prior in the
boreal wetlands of Hudson Bay, near
Churchill, Canada.
This little shorebird and two others
were tracked as they migrated to
Lea Island in Southeastern North
Carolina, just south of Topsail Island.
The island is part of Audubon North
Carolina’s coastal sanctuary network
and an officially designated import-ant
bird area. Its naturally occurring
PAT BRADFORD
Field tech Lucie le Tallec holds a short-billed
dowitcher near Churchill, Canada, just a few
weeks before the same bird would show up at
Audubon’s Lea Island Sanctuary.
OLIVIA MAILLET
inlets and mudflats are good forging
grounds for migrating species including these long-traveled
dowitchers.
The dowitchers’ journey was tracked by a new Motus tower
— the Motus Wildlife Tracking System, an international
collaborative research network that uses coordinated automa-tive
radio telemetry — installed in the spring. The birds were
radio-tagged near where they nested within 800 yards of each
other in Canada, then over a few days they traveled separately
cross-country to the undeveloped barrier island. The birds,
detected on different dates along the way, followed the same
path. A fourth tagged dowitcher was detected at Masonboro
Island, 15 miles south of Lea Island.
The birds were fitted with nanotags in June. The tiny radio
tracking devices weigh as little as an
aspirin and are an alternative to the
heavier satellite radio transmitters
placed on larger birds like hawks and
owls. The data collected is shedding
light on patterns of migration among
what Audubon describes as an
under-studied shorebird.
The solar powered 20-foot high
Motus tower was installed on Lea
Island as a partnership between
Audubon North Carolina, Cape Fear
Audubon Society and the University
of North Carolina Wilmington’s
Danner Research and Teaching Lab.
Towers on Bald Head Island and
Masonboro Island were installed by
the North Carolina Coastal Reserve
and the Bald Head Island Conser-vancy
in partnership with the Danner
Lab to further help detect migration
in the Cape Fear region.
Under the leadership of Dr. Ray
Danner, assistant professor of evolu-tionary
ecology and part of the Department of Biology and
Marine Biology, the Danner Lab focuses mainly on coastal
birds that nest on the beaches and marsh.
The towers pick up radio signals from any tagged bird that
flies within nine miles. The data is received by a ground-based
transmitter instead of an orbiting satellite, and is uploaded
automatically to the internet where it can be studied and made
available to the public.
The towers are part of a global network that is giving fresh
insights into the movements of birds making voyages from
Canada all the way to Argentina. The real-time data is made
available via a free Audubon app so users can view the migrating
birds that pass by.
24 october 2022
WBM