Towheeblog

Our tech co-ordinator for the Ankeny Motus tower is Rich Schramm. He tracked down and contacted the head of the Canadian project that tagged “our” robin last October near Vancouver. Here is the reply from Tara Imlay, Environment and Climate Change Canada:

I’ve cc’d my colleague … on this message, as I am presently on a leave of absence from my position with Environment and Climate Change Canada, and [she] is running the project in my absence.

Thanks for reaching out and sharing some information about your site!  It’s super cool that this individual has been hanging out at the NWA[R] for over a month now.  We know so little about bird movements during the non-breeding period, that all of these little data points can really add up.

Thanks also for sharing your shiny app!  It’s neat to see different options for making this information more easy to understand for a general audience.

The goal of this study is to better understand the overwinter survival of robins in the Metro Vancouver area and gain insight into the role that anthropogenic sources of mortality (cats, collisions) have on survival.  We are also gathering information on habitat use, within winter movements (and this is a big one!), migratory vs resident behaviour [love that British spelling], and migratory timing.

Good questions about the detections in Quebec and Florida – without examining the data too closely, I feel pretty confident that these are false detections.  Both stations are noisy and generate A LOT of false detections, and there simply isn’t enough time for this bird to have travelled from Quebec to Oregon.…

Yes, you are welcome to use the photo of a robin that you found on my twitter account.  What is your timeline on the newsletter article?  Sydney or I can probably pull something together depending on the deadline.

Cheers, Tara

Here is that photo…maybe not our robin but one tagged as part of this project.

The last signal from this Motus robin was detected at 830AM on Feb. 10. A previous signal gap lasted over two weeks so the bird may just be out of range or behind a hill. There are thousands of robins at Ankeny right now so clearly the refuge is a winter refuge with good robin provender.