Tracking the Oriental Pied Hornbill in Pulau Ubin
Posted by BESG on 17 April 09, Friday
Contributed by Lai Hui Min et al.
A GPS device weighing less than 5% of the bird’s weight was attached to a male Oriental Pied Hornbill (Anthracoceros albirostris) during the period when his mate was brooding two chicks inside the artificial nesting box in Pulau Ubin, Singapore. The male hornbill was tracked for four days in April 2008.
During this period his flight pattern, flight speed, total area covered as well as his interaction with the environment was monitored. The date were transmitted to a computer and stored for future analysis.
All these information would be extremely useful when conservation strategies are being planned.
Image of the Oriental Pied Hornbill in flight by Chan Yoke Meng.
Reference:
Lai Hui Min, Marc Cremades, Giacomo Dell’omo, Robert Teo Chee Hin, Abdul Rashid b Abdul Jalil & Ng Soon Chye (2009). Global positioning system using satellite tracking of Oriental Pied Hornbill during the breeding season in Pulau Ubin, Singapore. Paper presented at the 5th Intn. Hornbill Conference, Singapore, March 2009.
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Categories: Hornbills
Comment by jeff
Made Saturday, 18 of April , 2009 at 10:21 pm
certainly an interesting approach to scientific work and no doubt data collected would add value in understanding successful breeding patterns. just wondering is there any reason for 4 days-monitoring and not longer period (perhaps)?
further, is there any plan to share the breeding information in the form of scientific publication/magazine soon?
thks
Comment by YC
Made Saturday, 18 of April , 2009 at 10:50 pm
I am sure the information will be published - in the proceedings of the conference. Will try get the author to respond…
Comment by Lai Huimin
Made Monday, 20 of April , 2009 at 10:25 am
Hi,
I would like to reply to the response.
Firstly, the 4 days period was short due to the consumption of the GPS and the weight allowance of batteries we can put on the bird. We used Bluetooth to download the data, and that consumes battery as well. For that first year, we chose to obtain fixations once every second to get a good coverage of where the bird goes because no-one can really say if it flies far or near. If we use one fixation every ten minutes, of course we can track for more days but the points will be more scattered and some data might be lost. This first study is to give us an idea, and now we know they do not range too far during the breeding season, future studies will last longer as we change the fixation interval.
And yes, we will be publishing at leat 2 papers with our findings, with 4 continuous years of breeding monitoring in the wild and in captivity, natural cavities and artificial nest.
Thank you very much for your comments!
Best regards,
Lai Huimin
