Yesterday
i spotted a red milan with a GPS sender (unless this something else) Are there many flying GPSs?
or here is the observation
https://costarica.inaturalist.org/observations/245835824
or here is the observation
https://costarica.inaturalist.org/observations/245835824
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Cool to see, maybe its related to this project : LIFE EUROKITE Project rhwy seem to have tagged birds from Luxembourg with those GPS trackers.
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I am unaware of a site that lists all projects that envisage equipping wild animals with trackers. I have read about quite a number of such projects in Europe, though, from storks via hermit ibis to oriental wasps Vespa velutina (to locate the lattersâ nests to destroy them).
Let me add that I am impressed by your photographic skills, though. Iâd be very proud if I ever managed one like this!
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Thank you. Most people donât appreciate my photos, only 4 days ago somebody told me I uploaded too many foxes, I was really proud of that one, she was literally playing with a mouse. So I deleted the one
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you are right @paul_luap . Spot on.
no idea what besendert means but here you go:
https://www.life-eurokite.eu/en/our-birds/telemetry-map.html
One is called Weiler WKA 3 . Must be it
besendert = literally âbetrackeredâ, i.e. equipped with a tracker
As for the fox photo: Donât you dare let them bully you! Put that fox playing with the mouse right back onto iNaturalist where it belongs! I find observations of behaviour very interesting.
I have loads of foxes too. Hereâs one trailcam sequence of a fox that dared approach and examine that strange black snake lying in the grass (itâs just the cable that leads to one of my solar panels): https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/202828457
And hereâs a fox interacting with one of my cats that had been drinking from a water container I put there for the animals (the fox avoided eye contact at a certain point, which made the cat leave the spot): https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/98406234
Same spot by the water container, but different cat that just watches what the fox is up to: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/142974904
Same spot, two foxes drinking: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/111563824
Too many foxes, huh? Iâd say they can kiss my 11th segment. ;-)
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Here you go
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/244559155
and these sre my favourite
https://100asa.com/photo/232282/double-success?from=photographer&pid=7173
https://100asa.com/photo/233204/deux--la-fois?from=photographer&pid=7173
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GPS trackers are expensive. But, some researchers use them.
Broad-winged Hawks are monitored during migration by the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary Team.
MOTUS is used a lot more. Birds, bats and even dragonflies are tracked using these smaller and less expensive tracking devices. They donât give off a signal. They are only registered when an animal goes by a tracking station.
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@ken_ohio thank you. that explains how they can track even wasps. 
And the lack of navigation explains how one of your US dragonflies ended up at my favourite obserrvation spot in Costa Rica
There is a project for Marked & Tagged Wildlife of the World - you might like to add this observation to it
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I love them all, but I guess in particular the one where the fox looks your way!
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I found this about the Asian hornet, in German, yes, but there are pictures showing how they apply the tracker:
https://www.velutina.de/telemetrierung-duisburg-teil1/
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thank you @deboas . done and dusted
@olrett !!! Wow that is amazing. And I was dreaming of a tracker to find the direction of a bird call, but now they can even stick trackers to hornets. You live and learn
Ha, unfortunately the direction of a call can be so easily âdivertedâ by orography and vegetation â and I must be especially bad at locating the right tree or hole in the ground for that matter (thinking of a certain stationary orthopteran that I must have been ever so close to but just couldnât see).
Speaking of calls (and returning to foxes): https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/98717285 (there are also links to Youtube recordings in a comment)
Here how the echo distorted the screams: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/106026939
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Dragonflies: Last year in late summer when the common green darners were migrating, some dragonfly researchers came to a park in Northeast Ohio. There was an event where we could go out and catch dragonflies. The researchers examined them for health and attached MOTUS packs to some of them.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/180497902
Their research was centered around the common green darners. But, they said they would like to track wandering gliders, too, because no really knows how they migrate. It is thought that they are similar to the common green darner migration. But, no one has studied their migration. I thought that was really cool that there are things in nature like that that are still a mystery.
There were researchers from the U. S. Forest Service whose names I canât recall. Other researchers included Amy Thompson, Melissa Sanchez Herrera and Sandra Hunt-von Arb. I know Amy Thompson travels around the world to study dragonflies. Melissa Sanchez Herrera is in Columbia.
They had the event again this past August but, I wasnât able to attend. Maybe the parks will have it again next year.
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Ken, thanks for this information! I didnât know about MOTUS, and as a Canadian, I love that Birds Canada started this globally relevant tracking network.
I guess the most powerful transmitters â maybe like the one on the Red Kite, above â can be detected from 20 km away? Whatâs the detection range for a MOTUS transmitter on a dragonfly?
Different tracking devices use different technology to send/receive location information. The MOTUS ones need custom MOTUS towers placed anywhere along the route where researchers want to get information from (theyâre pretty well distributed around North America, but not as much the rest of the world). This Snowy Owl project requires the owls to fly within range of normal cell towers. Older small devices would require the organism to be recaptured to offload the data, or others use normal satellites. This project has been using an antenna on the International Space Station (which orbits lower than most satellites, so it takes less energy for the tracker to transmit data to it) but it looks like theyâre switching to other satellites in the near future.
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I think MOTUS devices can get as light as one-fifth of a gram (0.2 grams)
Do you have to recapture insects in order to get the data?
When I look at this video about ICARUS (from 10 years ago), it looks like they can only put these satellite transmitters on big animals: Bald Eagles, Great Blue Herons, etc. How small and light are the transmitters today?
I assume not, if the dragonfly project is using MOTUS. The point of MOTUS towers is to not have to recapture them. I was referring to old devices I remember seeing studies using like 10-15 years ago for small birds like warblers and swallows, before MOTUS was around.
I remember following this project before they got the antenna on the ISS and they said they were hoping for transmitters small enough to fit on insects, but currently it looks like the smallest species theyâre studying is Eurasian Blackbirds. If thatâs their size limit then it rules out a very large number of smaller songbirds, small waders, etc.:
The transmission technology will continue to be of great importance, as sensors weighing five grams are still too heavy for many animal species: 70 percent of bird species and 65 percent of mammal species, not to mention amphibians or insects, cannot be equipped with sensors using the current technology. The next generation of Icarus sensors will therefore weigh just one gram.
Their limitation is that they want to be able to transmit information from the organism all the way up to satellites, which gives way more flexibility but with a much harder engineering challenge.
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