This weekend I was involved in a very cool project to track the ‘pekinensis‘ Common Swifts at the Summer Palace. It all began with a conversation with Dick Newell, over a beer, in London in December. And on Saturday we fitted 31 geolocators to swifts at the Summer Palace in Beijing. We know almost nothing about the migration route or the wintering grounds of these magical birds that have a special significance to Beijing’s residents. Provided we can re-trap some next year, we’ll find out where they go… Exciting stuff! And the great thing is that this is a brilliant collaboration between Dick Newell, Lyndon Kearsley, the Beijing Birdwatching Society, the Summer Palace, the University of Lund in Sweden and many volunteers, young and old. You can read the full story on Birding Frontiers.
Terry, monster congrats for this! Wonderful that you could line up this type of research. So jealous here…….
Tom
Thanks Tom! The credit should go to Dick, Lyndon and the BBWS folks who have done all the work.. I just made the connection. Everyone is very excited about finding out the results next year.. I am sure there will be a surprise or two in the data. Terry
Pioneering stuff (yet again!). Will be incredibly interesting to see where these birds go. Hope you can recapture some. Congratulations on some great collaborative research.
Thanks Ken.. it is very exciting. I think the only thing we can be sure of is that the birds will surprise us!