Extending our understanding of animal ecology is an important part of the research agenda, helping us to understand, among other things, the impact of climate change on life on earth.
CoreRFID developed a specialised tag and mount to help.
Company:
| Lund University & others. |
| Project: | Custom RFID tags for animal tracking
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| Date: | December 2009
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Tracking Small Birds
One of the many projects at the Department of Animal Ecology at the Lund University in Sweden involved a need to track small birds. While RFID has been used to keep track of a wide range of animals as part of research projects, tracking finches, tits and other small birds has proved difficult.
To help a number of universities, CoreRFID developed a leg tag suitable for use with small birds which is now being used for a number of tracking projects, helping to explore the distribution and movements of these animals.
The CoreRFID research RFID tag
The leg tag uses a standard low frequency, glass, RFID tag only 12mm long and weighing less than a gram so as not to interfere with the bird's flight. Tags are mounted in a plastic sleeve that can be easily fitted to the bird's leg.
Using the tags, Lund University is able to easily identify birds that are being studied as part of its ecological research programmes.
CoreRFID developed the custom tag mounting which is used by Universities in the UK and Europe and also supply the 12mm tags, pre-encoded if required.
Tagged sparrows caught in a photo "trap"
The Benefits
- Similar to existing tagging approaches
- Allows automatic data collection with less distress to animals
- Lightweight tag and sleeve does not interfere with animal behaviour
- Uses standard tags, avoiding specialised tag development costs