Cayuga Bird Club's Motus station at Myers Point has detected 8 migratory birds this year. Sometimes it takes a while before the detection is connected with others to show a bird’s flight track. That is the case for two Red Knots and a Magnolia Warbler detected in May by our Myers Point Motus station, which now have migration maps available at motus.org.
Some Red Knots fly as far as 9000 miles during their migration from South America to their breeding grounds along arctic coastlines and tundra in Canada. One of the Red Knots that we detected at Myers Point flew all the way from *Argentina! *The bird was tagged on April 19, 2023, at Golfo San Matias on the coast of Argentina, part of a Canadian study of long-distance Red Knot migration. Because there are still very few Motus stations in South America to follow migrating birds, the next detection of the bird following its release was nearly a month later, at Chincoteague VA. The bird was also detected by other stations on Assateague Island that evening. Then on the evening of May 28, the bird was detected by Motus receivers near Philadelphia, followed by our Myers Point station at 1 a.m. May 29, and by Montezuma NWR and Ontario stations the same night. The most recent detection of the bird was at Hilliardton Ontario, north of Algonquin Park, later that day. It is likely that the bird continued further north for the breeding season. Map: https://motus.org/data/track?tagDeploymentId=49283. The other Red Knot detected by our Myers Point receiver flew by on May 19 at approximately 1:10 a.m. This bird had been tagged May 9 on the coast of South Carolina, moved northward along the coast past two more Motus stations that week, and then began heading northward at a faster rate. It was detected at Poplar Island MD (Chesapeake Bay) at approximately 9 p.m. on May 18, and later that night at Myers Point and at Montezuma NWR on its way north. The last reported detection for the bird was at Eganville, Ontario at 4 a.m. May 19, just 7 hours after its detection at Poplar Island. Map: https://motus.org/data/track?tagDeploymentId=48589. The distance this Red Knot traveled in one night, from the Chesapeake Bay to Eganville ON, was more than 470 miles (780 km) in 7 hours. This works out to a speed of approximately 67 mph or 21 meters/second! A recently published study of Red Knot migration by Felicia Sanders’s group in South Carolina found that the average speed of Red Knots during spring migration is 20 meters/second. For more information on Red Knot migration, and how Motus tracking has been used to study it, see *Spring migration patterns of red knots in the Southeast United States disentangled using automated telemetry*. Sci Rep 13, 11138 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-37517-y. Red Knots are rarely seen in the Finger Lakes, and if one is spotted, it is usually during its fall migration. It is interesting to learn that some Red Knots are flying up Cayuga Lake in the spring on their way north. Motus tracking of Red Knots will help to identify critical stopover habitats for these and other long-distance shorebird migrants. Another Motus detection map that has recently become available is for a Magnolia Warbler that we detected at Myers Point on May 16. Magnolia Warblers breed in the northeastern US and southern Canada and winter in Central America and the Caribbean. This warbler was tagged in Ohio on May 10, and was detected by other Motus receivers in Ohio and Pennsylvania as it headed northeast. It was detected at Myers Point at 12:30 am on May 16 for just a minute on its way to Montreal and then to the St Lawrence River at the Gaspé Peninsula (May 19). No later detections have been reported. Map: https://motus.org/data/track?tagDeploymentId=46547 To read more about birds we have detected with Cayuga Bird Club’s Motus receivers at Myers Point and at Mount Pleasant, go to www.cayugabirdclub.org/motus. Diane Morton Cayuga Bird Club -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
