EWMRC2024

Happy Halloween to you (and hopefully to all of our tagged birds)! We’ve had a few check-ins from our 2024 Nova Scotia females, all of whom are staying put in the province so far. Most of our GPS units (aka the smaller ones mostly on males) are currently on a ‘zombie’ schedule – they checked in right when they were deployed earlier this month, immediately entered a dormant period, and won’t come ‘back to life’ until November 15th. We crafted this schedule to capture the birds’ overwater migratory crossings of the Gulf of Maine, which in past years have mostly occurred...

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14 October 2024. Greetings from Nova Scotia! Over the past couple of weeks, Rachel (with the assistance of field technician Taylor and fellow graduate student Kylie) has been deploying GPS units in the province to track more birds through the province during their fall migration.The team is experiencing great success capturing birds on private land, with 20 transmitters deployed in two weeks, a record for the project this time of year! The highest capture rates are occurring during spotlighting in a cow pasture, and perhaps is the first use of such a capture site for this collaborative project. View the EWMRC interactive...

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09 September 2024.
The GPS units on our birds are still in their dormant phase, but at the University of Maine, we are far from dormant!

Several current and recently graduated students on this project presented talks at a conference in New Brunswick in August. Rachel has been making preparations for a longer than usual Nova Scotia field season, as she will be attempting to deploy 20+ transmitters to capture woodcock overwater crossings of the Gulf of Maine.

​Keep your eyes peeled for birds beginning to check in again in a few weeks!

View the EWMRC interactive mapping tool here.

13 May 2024.Things are quieting down, with almost all birds remaining stationary on what we assume are their breeding grounds. A couple birds made relatively small movements in the last week:– LA-2024-53 moving north of Québec City, then apparently deciding that was TOO far north, as this young male then moved back south of the St. Lawrence River.– The one 2024 West Virginia bird (yet to be assigned a number) that moved into eastern Ohio has since returned to West Virginia.Check out our interactive map below to trace the journey of the birds tagged this winter and spring! View the EWMRC interactive...

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​6 May 2024.
All but two of our new 2024 deployments in West Virginia have checked in, with all but one bird remaining stationary at their tagging sites (Canaan Valley NWR, Little Indian WMA, Grant county, and Summersville Lake WMA). 

LA-2024-34 moved 300km north from central Minnesota to western Ontario. All other Louisiana birds are stationary.

3 May 2024.

All of our Louisiana tagged birds are stationary, BUT…

We’ve received check-ins from two of our spring 2023 New York birds, NY-2023-53 and NY-2023-57, both adult males. 53 and 57 spent part their winters in western Mississippi and east of Atlanta, Georgia, respectively. Both were within 5km of their New York summering areas as of May 1, demonstrating high breeding site fidelity. We look forward to more of these birds checking in soon!