With winter right around the corner, thousands of feathered friends are flying south. New technology in Assiniboine Park is helping researchers around the world unlock the mysteries of this migration.
Installed atop the park’s Qualico Family Centre next to the duck pond, an antenna is creating a clearer picture of what is flying overhead.
“I feel like a lot of people don’t realize the amazing wildlife that flies overhead every night during the migration season. We have hundreds of species of birds and thousands of individuals travelling across Winnipeg right now,” said Laura Burns, the conservation program manager with the Assiniboine Park Conservancy.
“It’s really hard to understand the movement of a bird from the Arctic to South America, for example, to track them individually.”
That’s where the park’s new antenna comes in.
It’s called the Motus Wildlife Tracking System – a global collaborative project mapping feathered flight paths across the western hemisphere.
Motus (meaning movement or motion …