First MOTUS Detection

We had our first MOTUS tower detection at Fennessey Ranch this week! On April 18 a Franklin’s Gull passed by our tower. The previous detection for this gull was at the Estación Biológica Maritza in Costa Rica on November 17, 2024, which is a 2279km journey! Most recently, the gull was detected in South Dakota on April 23.

This gull was originally tagged by a group in North Dakota evaluating bird movement around airfields to better understand bird strike risk with aircrafts. The MOTUS wildlife tracking network is made up of many individual participant projects like this one, each deploying tags and receiver stations for their own goals. By centralizing data from all of these projects, the coordinated network expands the scale and impact of each project’s work.

Funding for this Gulf Coast sensing project was provided by the Texas Gulf Coast Research Center.