Message From the Board

August 2024 Tim Reynolds, Chair Friends of Camas NWR

This fall ends the second, and final, year of the Intermountain Bird Observatory’s bird migration inventory at Camas National Wildlife Refuge.  This herculean effort included banding birds at the refuge daily, weather and wind permitting, for two months in the spring (~15 April – 15 June) and three in the fall (15 July – 15 October); roughly 3000 person hours of banding each year! 

Friends of Camas was assisted by the Snake River Audubon and Portneuf Valley Audubon Societies, and a few private donations, in funding this effort.  We were also assisted by a CHC grant to purchase MOTUS tags; incredibly small transmitters, so we could track movements of birds which used Camas NWR as a migration stopover or nesting habitat.  

MOTUS is Latin for Movement.  The MOTUS program, orchestrated by Birds Canada, is an international collaborative network using automated radio telemetry to track animal movements for research and education on the ecology and conservation of migratory animals.   There are about 1000 MOTUS stations in North America, including Camas NWR and the IDF&G’s Sterling and Market Lake Wildlife Management Areas.  At this writing, MOTUS tags have been deployed on 10 song birds at Camas NWR. 

You can follow the movements of these tagged birds at https://motus.org/data/receiversMap?lang=en  

Once the page opens, click the drop-down menu arrow in the space above the map labeled “Show receivers on frequency.  On that menu, click “166.38 MHx Lotek Nanotags – Western Hemisphere.”  Now click “View in Whole Window”, found above the map on the left side.  Enlarge the map and center Idaho.  Click on the yellow dot north of Idaho Falls by Hamer.  In the window that pops up, next to “Tags Detected” click on either “table” or “timeline”, and follow the hotlinks of your choice. 

The MOTUS transmitters deployed on birds at Camas are solar powered.  Presumably we will be able to track these birds for the rest of their lives!