Tiny technology aims at tracking avians’ paths of travel

By Mary Ann Albright
Gazette-Times reporter

Cellular phones permeate modern American society, to the point where many wonder how they ever survived without the gadgets. From middle-school children to senior citizens, people everywhere seem to have the mobile devices glued to their ears.

And if Oregon State University scientists have their way, birds may soon join the world of wireless communication.

By attaching miniature cell packs to migrating songbirds, researchers hope to solve the mystery of where birds go and what perils they face when traveling back and forth from warmer and cooler climates each year.

“I saw that there was this big unsolved mystery in biology of where birds go, where they spend their lives,” said Douglas Robinson, assistant professor in OSU’s fisheries and wildlife department.

Robinson said common methods used by researchers to track birds yield unsatisfactory results. Attaching individual radio transmitters to birds’ backs proves ineffective, because radio signals do not transmit far enough to allow scientists to keep in contact with the birds.

Placing small metal bands around the legs of captured birds, then releasing them and hoping researchers elsewhere recapture them also is inefficient. According to Robinson, this method only works one in 500,000 times at best.

“I realized what we needed was a continental network of antennas. That’s what we have with the cellular network,” Robinson said. The avian ecologist then contacted OSU’s College of Engineering for help designing a cell phone small enough for birds to wear.

Robinson collaborated with OSU engineers Huaping Liu, Terri Fiez, Zhong Feng Wand and Kartikeya Mayaram. The researchers are currently designing a simplified, 0.07-ounce cell pack that will slip around birds’ legs “like pulling on a pair of underwear,” Robinson explained.

According to Liu, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, building a cellular device small enough that it won’t exceed 5 percent of a songbird’s weight is a challenging charge.

The cell pack will be about the size of the tip of a pinky finger and weigh about as much as two dimes. It will be centered on the bird’s back. Robinson said it will be covered by feathers and will not interfere with flying.

Songbirds account for about half of the world’s 9,200 bird species, and their numbers are falling because of factors such as habitat loss and predators. Therefore, Robinson believes that it’s important to understand their migration routes to help alleviate some of the dangers contributing to their decline.

To wear the cell pack, a bird must weigh at least 1.4 ounces. Many thrushes, grosbeaks, sandpipers and ducks are good candidates, Robinson said.

The study is funded by a three-year, $750,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. Its investigators hope to launch the project in 2007.

After testing the cell device in the Willamette Valley, researchers will travel to the tropics during the winter and attach the packs to hundreds of long-distance migratory songbirds.

To conserve batteries, they’ll leave the phones turned off until a pre-determined date when the birds are expected to be settled at their breeding sites in North America. Then the cell phones will activate and attempt to connect with the nearest cell tower.

The phone will transmit its identification number to the tower. The cellular network will then have a record of the bird’s number, what tower it is near and the date and time of contact.

Robinson said he already has a verbal agreement with TMobile for its cooperation, and hopes to secure similar arrangements with other cellular companies.

Because the birds won’t need functions such as voice encoding, keypads and games on their phones, Liu and his colleagues are trying to create a simplified cellular device.

“Cell phones are extremely complex. Our job is to take out all the components that we don’t need to follow migratory birds,” Liu explained.

“The birds aren’t going to be talking to anyone. We won’t let them. The roaming charges would be too high,” Robinson jokingly added.

In addition to helping solve the mystery of individual birds’ migratory patterns, Robinson believes this technology has valuable medical and military applications.

“With cardiac patients, you could monitor heart rhythms, and if a troubling pattern is detected, the cell phone could send a signal alerting the physician directly,” he said.

Mary Ann Albright covers higher education. She can be reached at maryann.albright@lee.net or 758-9518.