Someone in Ealing is believed to hold the clue to where a tracking device fitted to a bird is. A tag was attached to a Oystercatcher and fell off the bird on 7 April in the Orkney Islands and appears to have ended up somewhere in Ealing via other parts of the country.
The device is worth £1,000 and researchers for the project are offering a £100 reward for its return.
“The bird obviously hasn’t gone all the way down there”, said PhD student researcher Steph Trapp. “So we think someone must have found the tag whilst on holiday in Sanday, and taken it down with them. It feels a little bit strange being able to track their whole holiday, but the tags are programmed to record a pretty accurate GPS location every couple of hours”.
Once found the tag can then be used on another bird.
“If we do get it back, we can re-deploy it on another bird over the winter next season, and get a bigger sample size,” Steph added.
Anyone who has the device or seen it, can contact The College of Life and Environment at the University of Exeter. Details are here.
