Jump to content
Ornithology Exchange (brought to you by the Ornithological Council)
  • Auk Ornithological Advances - Editor's Choice: Study Confirms Feasibility of Tracking Parrots with GPS Telemetry


    Fern Davies
    • Author: AOUCOSPUBS

      Outwitting parrots takes ingenuity. Researchers in New Zealand figured out how to keep Keas from removing and destroying data loggers.

    (February 18, 2015, The Auk: Ornithological Advances)—Want to use GPS loggers to track parrots? It’s possible—you just have to make them beak-proof.

     

    For a new study in The Auk: Ornithological Advances, Erin Kennedy of the University of Auckland and her colleagues demonstrated this with Keas (Nestor notabilis), a large parrot found in the mountains of New Zealand. To protect the GPS devices from the birds’ crushing beaks and manual dexterity, they sealed them in tough polymer before attaching them to captured Keas with backpack harnesses. Of the 14 birds that were outfitted with the devices, two managed to remove the dataloggers within an hour and two birds were never recaptured, but the researchers were able to successfully track the remaining 10 for a week and identify where and when they foraged, roosted, and interacted with tourists. The parrots behaved normally while wearing the GPS dataloggers and showed no signs of feather or skin damage at the end of the week. GPS data can help identify essential habitats, migratory pathways, potential hotspots for human–wildlife conflict, and more, which can be critical for developing effective conservation and management strategies, and this study confirms that the technique can successfully be applied to parrots.

     

    Read the full open-access paper at http://www.aoucospubs.org/doi/full/10.1642/AUK-14-196.1.





    User Feedback

    Recommended Comments

    There are no comments to display.



    Join the conversation

    You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
    Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

    Guest
    Add a comment...

    ×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

      Only 75 emoji are allowed.

    ×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

    ×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

    ×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.


×
×
  • Create New...