Puffins get equipped with sat nav

IT | 20 Jul 2010

One of the things that has always set birds aside from humans is their navigational ability, migrating thousands of miles each year while we land dwellers fiddle with our maps or get sent the wrong way yet again by irritatingly unreliable satellite navigation systems.

Nevertheless, a select group of puffins are now aboard the sat nav bandwagon, as part of a project by the National Trust designed to track their daily flight paths.

GPS systems have been fitted to 12 birds in and around the Farne Islands off the Northumberland coast, in order to identify feeding ‘hotspots’, areas which may be targeted for conservation in order to protect the puffin’s future survival.

The research has shown that in addition to established breeding areas on land, the birds are heading to specific areas 20 miles out to sea, whereas they were previously thought to be heading anything up to 60 miles out.

Sixteen puffins were also temporarily fitted with time-depth recorders, to show how often they dive into the sea, how deep they go and for how long.

Furthermore, last year, small geo-locators were fitted to the leg rings of eight birds to find out where they disappear to in winter – two have so far returned and the data is waiting to be analysed.

2008 saw a dramatic 30 per cent decline in puffin numbers, though they have rallied with 5 per cent increases in the two years since.

Directory: National Trust

Comments

[Cancel] | Reply to:

Name *

Email *

Organisation

Job Title

Comments *

Verification *

* Please read our Community Standards

Close »

Community Standards

The civilsociety.co.uk community and comments board is intended as a platform for informed and civilised debate.

We hope to encourage a broad range of views, however, there are standards that we expect commentators to uphold. We reserve the right to delete or amend any comments that do not adhere to these standards.

We welcome:

Robust but respectful debate
Strongly held opinions
Intelligent relevant discussion
The sharing of relevant experiences
New participants

We will not publish:

Rude, threatening, offensive, obscene or abusive language, or links to such material
Links to commercial organisations or spam postings. The comments board is not an advertising platform
The posting of contact details for yourself or others
Comments intended for malicious purpose or mindless abuse
Comments purporting to be from another person or organisation under false pretences
Gratuitous criticism, commentary or self-promotion
Any material which breaches copyright or privacy laws, or could be considered libellous
The use of the comments board for the pursuit or extension of personal disputes

Be aware:

Views expressed on the comments board are left at users’ discretion and are in no way views held or supported by Civil Society Media
Comments left by others may not be accurate, do not rely on them as fact
You may be misunderstood - sarcasm and humour can easily be taken out of context, try to be clear

Please:

Enjoy the opportunity to express your opinion and respect the right of others to express theirs
Confine your remarks to issues rather than personalities

Together we can keep our community a polite, respectful and intelligent platform for discussion.