Cuckoos Tagged With Gps Trackers

[sapper756]

Cuckoos tagged with GPS tracker

 

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/53266000/jpg/_53266983_taggedcuckoo1_bto.jpg

Scientists from the British Trust for Ornithology are planning to attach tiny satellite trackers to cuckoos to study their migration patterns.

 

The UK has lost about two thirds of its cuckoos in the last 25 years.

 

Dr Chris Hewson, the scientist leading the project, says that tracking the birds will reveal more about the habitat they rely on.

 

The team will tag five male birds with trackers like tiny backpacks that weigh just five grams.

 

The tags have soft straps which fit around the cuckoos' wings.

 

"We'd eventually like to tag many more, but each tracker costs more than £2,000," said Dr Hewson, a research ecologist at the BTO, which is based in Thetford, Norfolk.

 

"But those five should give us brand new information," he told BBC Nature. "At the moment, we don't know what cuckoos do when they leave Britain - how they move around, where they go and when."

 

This is the first time cuckoos in the UK have been tracked.

 

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/53009000/jpg/_53009177_common_cuckoo_1_photolibrary.jpg

• Cuckoos are brood parasites. In the UK, they lay eggs in the nests of dunnocks, reed warblers and meadow pipits
• One female can lay up to 20 eggs in one breeding season
• The birds look like sparrow hawks and their appearance is thought to intimidate their hosts
• Cuckoos also fool their hosts with egg "mimicry". Their eggs' colour and markings resemble those of their victims

The birds only spend a quarter of the year - from mid April to mid July - in this country, and the team hopes that the data generated by the project will shed light on what is causing their decline.

 

"It should show some of the threats they face," said Dr Hewson.

 

"We might even be able to look at where the birds are dying as these [solar-powered] tags should last for two to three years and (from what we know about their survival rates) we would expect some of our birds to die within that period."

 

The GPS trackers will communicate their whereabouts via a satellite-based system called Argos, which was specifically developed to collect environmental data and has been adopted for several wildlife tracking studies.

 

[OLDYELLOW]

if cuck-coos lay 20 eggs a season and half of them are successful we should be over run with them !!!! just shows the mismanagement by the R.S.P.B

[john cumming]

if cuck-coos lay 20 eggs a season and half of them are successful we should be over run with them !!!! just shows the mismanagement by the R.S.P.B

 

correct, the eco balance is all to pot with our friends the BOP, level the playing fiels a bit and there would be a difference

 

 

john

 

[OLDYELLOW]

correct, the eco balance is all to pot with our friends the BOP, level the playing fiels a bit and there would be a difference

 

 

john

 

:emoticon-0137-clapping: :emoticon-0137-clapping:

[greenlands]

It's the RSPB who are the cuckoos

[just ask me]

wonder what they will think if any ends up in bop nests

[OLDYELLOW]

wonder what they will think if any ends up in bop nests

they wont end up in nest they be under a bop feeding post , they'll simply blame cats or say it fell off , but the biggest cats have wings and we all know it !!!!!

[Guest IB]

Remember these are scientists from the British Trust for Ornithology, AND nothing to do with RSPB, if anything, they are bigger & more powerful than RSPB. They have the power to decide which birds are British and which are not. Their claim to fame is saying European Eagle Owls aren't a British bird and announced on a BBC Nature programme they aren't covered by Wildlife protection Laws and anybody could go out and shoot them. And someone did. The hen that featured in programme was shot by someone using a shotgun.

[just ask me]

rumor was the rspb had a lot of these killed or caught

[Guest IB]

rumor was the rspb had a lot of these killed or caught

 

No sympathy for this cause. They are another predator that our own song birds have to contend with; single cuckoo egg hatches, youngster then turfs the resident bird's eggs and / or youngsters out of the nest.

[gordi.b]

was listening to a discussion on radio scotland this morning, it said the mighty r.s.p.b are going to fit transmitters to five male cuckoos in england so they can track them and find out why all the cuckoo,s are disapearing,

WHY DON,T THEY JUST ASK THE PIGEON FANCIER,S WE KNOW WHO THE CULPRITS ARE , DON,T WE GUYS