Telemetry, Here We Come

When your boss-the big boss-comes in your office and asks if you have your bike here today, to which you respond yes, and then asks whether you’d like to go out with him and test a radio transmitter to be used on corvids, backpack-style, hauling your yagi antenna around on the bike, you say yes, not knowing that he actually means RIGHT NOW. This is what I did at 10:30 am. I found the transmitter he had hidden in the wild grape near the freeway. He showed me how to use the directional antenna, how to alter the controls to get the most efficient pinpointing of sound.

Numenius and I will almost certainly be participating in a study Walter Boyce will be heading up at the Wildlife Health Center focusing on crows, yellow-billed magpies, and West Nile Virus. We’ll be checking in on the birds every day, trying to track them down if they die, which we’ll know because the radio signal will change. It sounds like a lot of fun. And it’s even all in a day’s work.