
High-tech tracking reveals ‘secret world of birds’ - pseudolus
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/high-tech-tracking-reveals-birds-movement-beyond-migration-180975673/
======
supernova87a
Turns out a male bird has to fly farther to mate because the females think he
looks ridiculous with the antenna fanny pack hanging off his rear end.

------
renewiltord
Hang on, these radio tags actually transmit? They're so tiny! $200 for each¹.
Damn, radio transmitters are way lower-energy than I thought. This is
fascinating.

¹ [https://motus.org/selection-
guide#selectionGuide_section_hdt...](https://motus.org/selection-
guide#selectionGuide_section_hdtdtc)

~~~
sbierwagen
Only run for 12h a day, transmitting every few seconds, and transmitting
_very_ few bytes.

Even so! I thought I was moderately familiar with battery powered radios, but
Lotek claims the NTQB2-1, which masses 0.26 grams, can last for _103 days_ at
a 29 second interval. Their product photo shows it attached to a dragonfly!

None of their documentation says what the EIRP is. I wonder about the
effective radius. If you miss a transmission, that data is gone forever, of
course. No way can it afford the power budget for acknowledgement packets.

~~~
codetrotter
> Their product photo shows it attached to a dragonfly!

That's pretty cool! Do you have a link? I couldn't find it.

~~~
naavis
The product page had an embed of this:
[https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2019/07/04/dragonflies-w...](https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2019/07/04/dragonflies-
with-tiny-fanny-packs-show-migration-patterns-in-new-study.html)

~~~
codetrotter
Awesome, thanks :)

------
082349872349872
tl;dr radio tracking reveals migratory birds have larger ranges at the
breeding endpoint than we'd thought.

