Student reunited with bird tracker after tourist accidentally takes it on tour from Orkney to London

Bird tracker
One of Steff's bird tracker, and a map of the route one of the took.

A relieved student has been reunited with a costly bird tracker which ended up hundreds of miles from its intended location, after being unwittingly taken home by a tourist.

Steph Trapp turned to social media to help find the £1,000 device, which the researcher was using on behalf of the local council for a winter project.

The tracker's journey was traced on a map ,which showed it travelled from a remote beach in Orkney all the way to west London after falling off an oystercatcher.

It later emerged the gadget was placed in a bag of shells and holiday souvenirs by an Ealing holidaymaker who was visiting friends on the Scottish island.

"An Ealing resident got in touch after hearing us on the radio asking for information, and very kindly offered to post some leaflets through the doors of houses we thought the tag could be at," Steff said.

PhD student Steph Trapp with an oystercatcher

The leaflet landed on the doormat of Mike German who realised he brought it back to London with him.

"I think it was quite a surprise for him! He hadn't known what it was when he picked it up from the beach, and obviously didn't realise it had been tracking him and that we could see where it, and he, had been!" Steph explained.

Steff said she had been using GPS tags to follow the movements of several species in Dublin Bay for Fingal Council to find out how much birds use green spaces.

'Tags are so expensive'

The research helps helps councils think about how to incorporate the needs of wildlife into town planning and ensure habitats are given proper protection.

"Because the tags are so expensive, we are limited in the number we can afford," Steff explained.

"We usually start projects like this with the bare minimum we need for a sample size that is large enough to be representative of the whole population.

Any we can get back will be really valuable because we can then re-use them, put them on different birds next season, to increase our sample size and the amount of data we can collect.

"This will give us a much more accurate picture of what the birds are doing and which habitats they are using, which means that any conservation actions coming from those results will be more targeted and effective," Steff added.

Several tags have been returned with two back from Orkney, another on its way from the Faroes, and one all the way from Iceland.


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