All tags deployed!

It was a busy winter getting all the tags out and with your generous donations and the money from National Geographic, I was able to deploy 35 tags!! 17 of these were deployed at the coastal California site and 18 at the inland California site.

 

A beautiful Golden-crowned sparrow equipped with a GPS tag. You can see the antenna on it's back.

This winter we've had record rainfall in California! This is great for droughts, but it also meant a lot of rescheduling for field work. We don't trap the birds in the rain because we don't want them to get too cold and wet. Yet despite all that rain, tagging was successful. Now, thankfully it's spring! This means that the birds will all be leaving soon to head north.

 

None of this would have been possible without the help of the bird experts at Point Blue Conservation Science (Diana Humple and Renée Cormier pictured here), who trained me in the proper harness placement on these small birds.

Over the next few weeks I'll be going out a few times to see if I can "re-sight" any of the tagged birds. Although almost every bird has been seen at least once after tagging already, this allows an extra bit of confidence that the bird is thriving, the tag is on, and the bird is expected to return. I expect that most of the birds will begin their travels north around mid-April. On April 19th, make sure to celebrate just a little - because that's when the tags are programmed to take their first point!

As always, thanks again for your support! Tag retrieval begins in the fall, so you'll be hearing from me then!