The first three birds to check in after a summer off-grid are three of our harlani that we tagged last winter in Kansas and Nebraska. Fortunately, all three transmitters worked great and we now have nesting locations and some fine scale movement data! Here are their tracks to date:
There are still a lot of birds that have yet to send in their summer data, so we will soon have more to report. For now, enjoy these tracks!
Osborne is carrying a transmitter purchased by Luke Klicka and Peru State College in Nebraska. We really appreciate Luke’s willingness to collaborate on this work!
Red-tailed Hawk Project 
I find this very interesting. Do you foresee ever working with the Cornell Bird Lab to track First Year Buteos in their natal dispersal? I feel like there’s a big market for donations for transmitters in the online communities that watch nest cams.
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Hi Robert,
That’s a great question! We absolutely hope to track juveniles leaving the nest, since one big hole in our understanding of population dynamics in the species is having a clear understanding of natal dispersal. If we understand average distances for natal dispersal in the species, we’ll better understand why we sometimes see birds of a particular phenotype breeding in areas that are outside of their described distribution (i.e. non-harlani in Alaska). We’ll also gain a more concrete perspective to aid in our interpretations of what our genomic data tell us.
Tagging individuals that are the subjects of nest camera programs is an interesting idea that we’ll consider. Thanks for the comment!
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