Adopt-a-shorebird
As we enter the last weeks of fall migration and begin settling in for the winter, our volunteers and researchers are preparing for the final DWB shorebird tagging session of 2024, coming up November 14-16. After banding over 150 shorebirds in October, including deploying 30 Motus radio tags and 7 Druid Bluetooth tags, as well as our first ever recapture (a Least Sandpiper we banded in November, 2023), we’re excited for the scientific and conservation insights that will be enabled by these monitoring technologies. Each year, radio tag data are revealing fascinating insights into the macro- and micro-scale movements of wildlife, such as these Motus Demonstration Maps for Red Knots and Semipalmated / White-rumped Sandpipers. And the track below (from a Wilson’s Snipe captured on October 18) shows an example of how the Druid bluetooth tags are already revealing the local movements of shorebirds during their stopover in the Mississippi Delta. With an increasing amount of real-time data at our fingertips, we wanted to offer an opportunity to participate in this exciting monitoring and support DWB’s landscape-level conservation.
Movements of a Wilson’s Snipe in Sunflower County, Mississippi, from its capture on October 18, 2024, through November 10.
Numbers in the green circles are the number of detection points captured at that location.
Adopt a wind bird for yourself or as a gift, and share in the fascinating wonders these remote monitoring devices reveal as these avian marvels visit our beloved state during fall migration and winter! For a donation of $250 for a Motus radio tag, or $500 for a Druid bluetooth tag (donate here), these symbolic adoptions help provide critical data on migration patterns, particularly informing stopover site locations and durations, as well as localized movement within our study sites in the MS Delta. Motus radio tags only tell us how long a tagged bird remains present, but also have the potential for fascinating off-site detections on radio towers throughout the Motus network in the Western Hemisphere (see some examples here). Druid bluetooth tags collect detailed GPS-style location data, tracking movements to the nearest 10 meters, and providing us the data as long as tagged birds remain in our area (within range of our bluetooth detectors). After you adopt or give an adoption, you’ll receive an alert when your bird is tagged, including: the bird species, age, sex, banding date, the US Fish and Wildlife band number, and the opportunity to monitor its tracking data.
Each tag DWB deploys costs ~$250 for a Motus tag, and ~$500 for a Druid tag, but this does not include costs of towers and receivers, bird capture and banding equipment, or the labor and troubleshooting our volunteer researchers commit year-round. Our future capacity to expand these remote monitoring efforts, as well as the potential to investigate new hypotheses, is entirely dependent on the number of tags we can purchase and deploy. Each adoption directly funds future tag purchase and deployment costs, while helping uplift DWB’s broader community conservation work in the MS Delta.
Won’t you join us? Visit here to support the program.
A Lesser Yellowlegs is affixed with a solar-powered tag that will collect GPS-style location data during its stopover in the Mississippi Delta