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| Lucy (3L+) fitted with her Micro Logger |
Apologies for the long pause since my last post, fieldwork was hot and hectic but very successful and, as always, lots of fun. I visited all my study colonies to record number of chicks per nest and gather more samples. More on that in a later post. More importantly, you are, of course, all wanting to hear about the logged chicks!
Firstly, my sincere thanks to all who generously donated money for loggers -and for supplying good, strong names for the chicks. May they live long and fly far.
Unfortunately we could not fit loggers to the chicks of logged adults. The nests were inaccessibly high or the adults failed to raise any chicks. We even had the local firemen on standby to help us access Carlos's nest but when I visited the colony I discovered he had also failed to breed. Most disappointing not to have firemen helping me out in the field!
Instead the loggers were fitted to the chicks of non-logged adults in Nuno and Aldina's colonies.
A map of the chicks movements will be uploaded to the BTO's website soon.
We deployed our usual loggers and trialled some new designs:
Micro Logger:
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| The new, lighter, Micrologger (left) next to our usual logger.
This was fitted to Lucy (3L+).
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| Solar panels: Lighter still and longer lasting. |
Solar Panels:
The solar panel loggers are notably tall so that once the logger settles below the feathers the solar panel still receives sunlight.....
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...and so like a little toy car when packed that some doodling was irresistible!
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| Aldina's chicks were deemed too small and under weight to carry loggers |
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| Bernado (3C+) fitted with his solar panel logger. |
With a huge thank you to Carlos Pacheco for helping me fit the loggers.
