NAAS's two Motus stations are ready to track wildlife.  All we need now is a tagged bird to fly by our stations that are connected with an international network which tracks more than 200 species of tagged animals including songbirds, bats, raptors, butterflies, seabirds, migrating dragonflies and now Monarch Butterflies. Motus receiver stations situated throughout the world forward data to Birds Canada. That data is available for research and educational purposes.

On installation day, Kelly Cullen, of Niles Radio Communications, climbed down the tower, hooked up his computer to the brains of the system and waited for the test tags to ping the receivers he had just spent all day installing. The proof would be in the signal.

Several of us drove the tags some distance away while on a conference call with Kelly. We all held our breath until we heard "Yep, I got it. The big CTT tag is coming in strong."  Then he would change to a different page on the internal system and once again, we'd hold our breath to hear if the nanotag would be picked up? We actually cheered and raised our hands in joy and amazement that he was seeing the tiny tag's signature.

Later we got word from Anne Pelligrini, an Ornithologist and long-time NAAS member, that our station had been instrumental in her testing tags to make sure they were working. How exciting it was to know that we can help researchers verify that tags are working before they are placed on wildlife. And it helps us to find out how far away tags can be detected. 

Look for a ribbon-cutting event in the future. In the meantime, we'll monitoring our two stations waiting for the day that a ping comes in when a tagged bird (or other species) on the wing does a flyby!

For more information about Motus Wildlife Tracking Stations visit: https://motus.org/.