We have been working on sorting out licensing and equipment for this project which had to be specially manufactured for this project. We are working with a range of experts on the project in order to attach tags to these raptors and all work is carried out under special licence from NIEA and also the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) who licence the expert team involved in the deployment of the specialist equipment.
We are phenomenally excited about the deployment of the these tags over the coming weeks and we will be able to upload maps and images of the areas that these birds are using and identify areas and times of activity such as foraging and perching and roosting locations.
A recent report http://www.snh.org.uk/pdfs/publications/commissioned_reports/982.pdf produced by experts on behalf of the Scottish Government found a variety of linkages related to the suspicious disappearances of tagged golden eagles which shows the utility of this type of work and the use of the technology in monitoring patterns and locations of raptors.
For more information on how this technology is being used to understand and protect raptors why not check out the following links to learn more about the technology https://www.rspb.org.uk/our-work/conservation/satellite-tracking-birds and a range of individual species including
golden eagles (here, here etc)
http://www.roydennis.org/animals/raptors/golden-eagle/satellite-tracking/
honey buzzard
http://www.raptor-research.de/pdfs/a_sp100p/a_sp148_Meyburg_2010_Honey_Buzzard.pdf
Eleanora falcons
http://www.ornithologiki.gr/page_in.php?tID=1999&sID=136
Saker falcon
http://www.kerecsensolyom.mme.hu/en/content/show?dattype=sat_birds http://rarebirdspain.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/satellite-tracked-hungarian-saker-falco.html
Black kite
Hen harrier
