U.S. Fish & Wildlife ServiceThis is part of the storymap, "MOTUS: Revolutionizing Data Collection, One Bird at a Time." Some migratory shorebirds fly long distances. But how do we know the paths that birds fly? How do we know where they stop, what they eat, and who their predators may be? We track them. The Motus Wildlife Tracking System is an international collaborative research network of automated radio-telemetry receiving stations. Motus, which is Latin for movement, tracks insects, birds, bats, and other animals over the landscape, using radio technology. It's just one of the tools that biologists, conservationists, and others use to monitor wildlife. Motus is but one of several technologies used to track birds. Another system, Argos, is based on sending signals to receiving stations on orbiting satellites, which then transmit them back to earth. Birds wearing these transmitters bounce highly accurate locations of their whereabouts off of receivers on satellites and down to researchers for decoding. However, these Argos transmitters require larger batteries, and are heavier than Motus transmitters. About 4500 birds are tracked every month with Argos.ArcGIS FeatureLayerhttps://hub.arcgis.com/datasets/90833328264d4575801d3d44e1458724_0engU.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Open DataPublicCurrent and Future MOTUS Projects in the West [United States]Web servicesUnited StatesLast Modified: 2020-02-26