Motus: Putting Arizona on the Map

The Feathered Desert Podcast

Summary: What is MOTUS? It’s the next step in bird migration science. Join Cheryl and Kiersten to find out how this is putting the Phoenix Valley on the map!

For our hearing-impaired listeners, a transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

Show Notes:

MOTUS: https://motus.org

“What is MOTUS?” by Rebecca Stephenson. Desert Rivers Audubon Magazine, Winter 2023.

As of the recording of this podcast, we have not been able to find a link with volunteer information for MOTUS but the article on this site tells you how to reach out if you’re interested: https://sonoranjv.org/building-capacity-motus/

Transcript

Cheryl: Intro

It has been a constant challenge for scientists to study migrating birds. They do not stay in one place for long. Where these birds go, stop over, and end up on their journeys? What scientists would love to have available to them s a way to fly along with these birds so they have a complete picture of how these birds live. This complete picture is what an amazing wildlife tracking system called Motus does.

Kiersten: What exactly is Motus?

Well, it was started by the non-profit Birds Canada in 2014. Motus is Latin for movement and the system seeks to track the precise travels of birds and other winged creatures, like bats, bees, and monarch butterflies through digital radio telemetry. This is how it works; birds and other winged animals are carefully fitted with a small, lightweight transmitter, called a nanotag. These nanotags are attached using minimalistic harnessing or glue. Then the animals are released. There is no need to recapture them to obtain the data collected, instead the transmitter on the bird sends back a unique ping out into the atmosphere on a shared radio frequency. The pings transmit in a 12-mile radius around the bird as it goes about its life. The motus tower stations tuned to this frequency then picks up the pings and relays the data to the database headquarters in Canada, where it is processed, analyzed, and shared with researchers.

Cheryl:

When tracking wildlife with automated radio telemetry over vast distances, the challenge of deploying enough receivers to detect the tracking information grows exponentially. To be able to share this information between researchers MOTUS remedies that so basically everyone is sharing the same data. This greatly expands the potential to track birds with high temporal and geographic precision over great distances which put Motus so far ahead of the more commonly used tracking methods. These methods Kiersten and I have talked about in one of our migration podcasts. There’s the GPS or geolocator tracking device, this device stores data over time or as you may have seen on TV a person following an animal with a handheld receiver. In order for stored data to be useful it has to be recovered. This involves recapturing the animal/bird and removing it. A lot of variables at play, and long hours for the researchers.

Like anything in life things don’t always go as planned even with Motus. There are the transmitters, the large ones are solar-powered, this eliminates the need to change batteries, but the smaller ones, these fit on small songbirds, hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies must rely on battery power. Once the battery goes dead the transmitting of data stops, there’s also nature getting in the way like a bird dies, or the transmitter falls off.

Kiersten: Then there are the tower stations.

The tower stations for Motus are just small antennae connected to a receiver and power supply. Each station detects pings from any transmitter within a nine-mile radius of it, in optimal conditions. As impressive as that may be, it is still limiting as far as being a wide-ranging migration tool. To effectively track wildlife in real time requires a lot of stations. The stations have to be installed, then diligently maintained, which can be a difficult job considering that they are often placed in remote locations, subjected to environmental havoc such as lighting strikes, or sometimes rendered in operable by an animal’s teeth.

But it is all so worth it, because through the data collected by Motus scientists get a complete picture of a bird’s migration journey: where it goes, how fast it travels, where it stops to rest and for how long, and where it ends up. This information can help scientists to know how birds migrate, such as what areas they rly on during stopovers, how long they stay at each spot, when and where they begin their journey, and where it ends. This information also, expands on the nuances of migration and what specific populations do.

As of 2023, over 1,500 Motus tower stations have been deployed in a total of 31 countries, including Canada and the United States. Mexico, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Chile.

Cheryl: Motus is growing.

Even though Motus is still in its infancy, it is growing rapidly through the international conservation communities. Motus has shed light on the lives of endangered birds such as the Pacific Red Knot, Snowy Plover, Tricolored Blackbird, and grassland birds, and the mysterious Lewis Woodpecker.

A third of migrating bird species in North America are on the verge of extinction. That is alarming, but with this powerful conservation tool we can learn about the potential problems birds face at both ends of their full annual range. Motus collects the kind of data that ells biologists precisely how each and every bird survives year to year-what waterways, or other landscapes birds are using to make their survival happen. Motus also shows us what areas birds are not using or avoiding. This data will help researchers to know what areas need to be protected to help birds survive and thrive.

Kiersten: Arizona on the map.

As of 2023, Arizona only had a modest handful of three Motus tower stations, including one attached to a defunct windmill-now that is changing. There are plans to currently build more towers, with the possibility of one being placed at the Gilbert Riparian Preserve and outfitting more birds with transmitters. Arizona had its first Motus Tag application certification training course to teach volunteers how to safely handle and tag birds in February of 2023. There are plans to host many more in the coming months. Running Motus takes volunteers, and experts working together.

Cheryl: Closing

So, the more volunteers, the more transmitters that are airborne, the more transmitters that get deployed, and the more towers there are to move the data the bigger, and more complete the picture of bird migration patterns will be. As the saying goes the more the merrier… it’s true with Motus.