Telemetry

I wield the Yagi antenna like a fencer's foil, straight out in front, hopes high for a good signal, a blip of information that will dictate my next move. It beeps and I charge forward in the direction of the strongest signal. I am on top of a ridge above Portezuela (PZ) and the signal is pointing me down into a steep drainage filled with dense manzanita--a radio tracker's worst nightmare. Luckily, the signal is strong enough that I know the bird has to be close enough to me that I might not have to bushwack through too much stiff manzanita branches or scratchy chamise. I am looking for YGY/AP, a one-year old bird with a tiny radio transmitter backpack, a sneaky bird who we have not seen for nine days because he traverses the ridges and disappears to who-knows-where. I know that he is close because I can hear a bird pecking at bark on a branch. I drop to my hands and knees, unplug the antenna from the receiver so I don't rip it out (they are much too fragile for the vegetation we plow through every day), and crawl under a dried out manzanita trunk, crunchy leaf duff filling my boots and chamise brushing my hat back on my head, scratching my face. Through the tangle of the smooth, maroon, peely manzanita branches, I can see a pair of jay feet and the flash of yellow and green. That's my bird! I get a little closer to make sure it is, in fact, YGY/AP and start my timer. I watch him forage in the duff for five minutes, take a GPS point, and clamor out of the drainage back up to the road on the ridge. One bird down, eight to go, times two. It is the beginning of an epic day in the field.

Transmitter/antenna.

Last fall, twenty hatch year (HY) birds (born spring 2012) were trapped, banded, and fitted with dime-sized transmitters that have a six-inch long antenna sticking out. Our job this spring is to find these birds every day until we have at least 30 separate GPS points on each one. This data will help the "bosses" determine where young birds go
when they disperse from their birth territory. All hatch year birds (after January 1st they are called Second Years, SY) have to travel away from their natal territories to be able to establish their own territories in suitable habitat. SY birds don't always find a mate and establish a territory right away, so this data will help us have a better idea of where these birds are spending their time in that first year and in what habitat. We record who the bird is interacting with and in what way (pair behavior like joint perching and bobbing, territorial behavior like aggressiveness, and foraging behavior within a certain radius) for five minutes of when we first detect them.

This winter was particularly harsh on the jays so only nine of the twenty transmitter birds remain.  Six birds died--we found their transmitters near a scatter of ratty blue feathers. One bird disappeared completely--we never found a signal. Five birds dropped their transmitters--we found their transmitters dangling in thick brush or on the ground with broken straps. Luckily, one of these birds seems to have established a territory at the top of the Red Neck Bowl in PZ and we find him almost every day we track. He is exhibiting paired behavior with another one of our transmitter birds, which is pretty exciting.

Back to the big day. I wanted to get every bird twice, and YGY/AP three times, which meant I needed to be in the field for at least six hours because we have to wait at least three hours in between GPS points. I started high on the ridge and got points on YGY/AP and UGW/AP, then hiked down the steep crumbly old road to pick up the birds in the valley below. I found WYB/AP and OYB/AP on foraging on top of a small oak-covered ridge. I found OUK/AP foraging low in the oaks where she always is in No Man's Land. This time, though, the oaks were dripping with the liquid lemony song of Nashville Warblers so I stopped for ten minutes to soak that up and get a glimpse of the sneaky migrants hiding in the tippy-top of scrub oak leaves. Then I hauled up to the top of the Red Neck Bowl to look for RYP/AP and her man WBO/AP. I'm not sure why exactly, but I have a fondness for RYP/AP. There are just some birds that you look at and they are more than just a bird. They make your heart feel mushy. She is like a small child that I get to watch grow up and hopefully flourish in this insane world. I feel proud of her when she catches a moth out of mid-air. Weird, right? She was foraging by herself and WBO/AP was nowhere to be found. He is the bird that dropped his transmitter, so we get points on him by luck only (but we have more points on him that a few other birds who are just really, really hard to find sometimes).

At this point, I had points on all the "easy" valley birds and had almost two hours to go until I could get another GPS point on YGY/AP, so I went after BGB/AP--the ghost bird. He disappears up a deep canyon most days but sometimes he shows up randomly right in front of your face when you aren't even looking for him. The first week of tracking, we spent hours each day getting frustrated by his ghostliness. Then one day I was walking down from tracking in the Red Neck Bowl and I heard the jingling of bands scuffling around in the dead leaves below a scrub oak. I snuck into the foliage to get a better look and there was BGB/AP, the first time we saw him all season! I found him without even using a receiver!! I could barely contain my excitement. Today I hiked to the top of a high ridge and pointed my antenna in the direction of his Bermuda Triangle drainage. Nothing. No signal. I wandered further and tried again. Nothing. No signal...until all of a sudden I saw a bird rise above a distant ridge and the signal went from nothing to a loud blip. I ran. No joke, I booked it through a grassy field and then up and down a rocky ridge along an old sheep fence. I ran--equipment jostling around me, tripping over my own toes--for almost 1/3 of a mile without stopping because I wanted this bird bad. After all that, the bird I saw rise above the ridge wasn't him and I spent the better part of an hour trying to locate him, but I never did.

BGB/AP on one of the days I did get him. Note the antenna sticking out near his tail.

I had to get back up to the top of the ridge to find YGY/AP again, so I raced back up there and then back down again to get the valley birds in round two for the day. Luckily, they were all in similar places so it only took an hour or so to get them all. WBO/AP was back in his territory foraging with RYP/AP. The only bird that gave me trouble was OYB/AP, who lead me on a steep chase down a grassy hillside dense with low scrub oaks, so I was sliding on my butt and breaking branches with my face trying to follow her. Then her signal disappeared. I gave up on her until later and then found her foraging alone exactly where I had started to track her over an hour earlier. Tracking something with wings is really interesting because they can just take off whenever they feel like it and there is nothing you can do about it.

After I got all the valley birds a second time, I hiked back up to the top of the ridge to get YGY/AP a third time and got back to the truck at 2:30pm. Due to a combination of the heat (easily in the 80s with little breeze), the duration (almost 8 hours of straight hiking), the distance, and the topography, I decided it was the most strenuous day of field work I have ever done. The best part was that I could have stopped after getting one point on each bird and headed home feeling accomplished, but I was so naturally jacked up on dopamine that I felt like I was on top of the world, invincible. Tracking is like an exciting treasure hunt, except your "treasure" is mobile. It is so thrilling to finally find the bird you are looking for. I just didn't want to stop! It did feel pretty amazing, though, when I drove home and jumped in an ice cold shower. It was a beautiful afternoon, so the four of us on the crew hung out on the porch sipping Bourbon as the sun dipped below the ridge where I had started my morning. Ish'p'oy.

On top of the ridge with my antenna.