Portions of a pelican flight path captured by the Motus System including our Missouri Headwaters Station. This bird was tagged last year as a juvenile at Gunnison Island in the Great Salt Lake. The drought this year has caused land bridges to form allowing land predators to access previously protected colony nesters like the pelican. Researchers in Utah are concerned and are monitoring what kinds of adjustments the pelicans are making in response to this nesting threat. Motus gives them the data to see what is going on.
The power of Motus. I photographed this pelican in the fall of 2020. This bird was tagged in the spring of 2018 in Minidoka National Wildlife Refuge in Southern Idaho. Sightings and reports on a wing tag, a traditional form of banding, are few and far between. My report was the first report since the tag. Compare that to the dozen or so data points on the one-year-old pelican and you can see the value and power of the Motus system.
This is the approximate flight path of the Thick-billed Longspur picked up at the Headwaters Tower on May 28th. This is the western-most flight path of any of the tagged birds of this species.
