Motus: International Research Collaboration
BRI has been tracking wildlife for decades to understand movements, migration patterns, and more. Advancements in technology have greatly increased our ability to track and follow these animals on their journeys. The Motus Wildlife Tracking System is an international network of automated radio telemetry that allows researchers to detect each other’s transmitters and share information across projects, thus greatly increasing the geographic scope of monitoring.
Motus uses small, lightweight radio transmitters to track the movements of birds, bats, and even insects across large landscapes. Through a growing number of Motus projects, BRI is working with partners across the Atlantic Flyway to expand detection networks, tag understudied species, and explore new frontiers in aerial tracking. Learn more about some of our research projects below!
River Point Bird Observatory: Motus Tags on Songbirds
At River Point Bird Observatory in Maine, Motus tags are helping us understand how wetland-dependent songbirds use the landscape throughout migration.
We’re tagging species like the Northern Waterthrush to track their movements beyond the marshes of Riverpoint. These small birds depend on intact wetland corridors, and Motus data is helping us paint a clearer picture of how they navigate a changing environment.
Funding for this work is generously provided by the Maine Outdoor Heritage Fund.
Northern Waterthrush with a Motus tag © Amy McLaughlin
Project WOW: Motus Tags on Northern Gannets
BRI scientists Logan Route and Kim Lato attaching a Motus tag to a Northern Gannet © Carl Lobue
As part of Project Wildlife and Offshore Wind (WOW), BRI biologists and collaborators are studying the offshore movement patterns of Northern Gannets and Great Black-backed Gulls by deploying GPS tags on individuals in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York. A subset of birds are also being double-tagged with Motus transmitters to help understand the detection range of Motus stations in the region.
The project is also expanding Motus tower coverage in the region by updating the Motus towers on Block Island, and calibrating detection zones to understand how these tagged birds are picked up by coastal and offshore towers. This research will help refine placement of future Motus stations and describe movement and behavior patterns of birds and bats at offshore locations.
BRI researchers and project collaborators are also developing models to help estimate 3-D positions of birds and bats from the detection data. This work is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management under Grant Number DE-EE0010287, Offshore Wind Energy Environmental Research and Instrumentation Validation.
New Jersey Motus Expansion
With support from the New Jersey Research and Monitoring Initiative (RMI), BRI and collaborators with the American Bird Conservancy, Willistown Conservation Trust, and Ocean Tech Services are expanding the Motus network throughout coastal and offshore New Jersey—an area critical for migratory birds and bats. This project supports local and regional efforts to assess bird and bat movements, migration patterns, and risk associated with offshore wind development.
A large part of this project is working to understand how the radio detections from the towers can be translated into 3D estimates of where the birds are in space—something that can’t currently be done with Motus technology.
To address this, BRI is using drones equipped with Motus tags to fly systematic calibration missions around receiver stations. These flights help map the extent and shape of each tower’s detection zone—information that is critical for translating detections into more spatially accurate movement data. This drone-based calibration is part of a broader set of land and ocean protocols being developed to refine detection range estimates and improve the utility of Motus data for tracking small-bodied wildlife offshore.
All data collected will be openly shared with the research community through the Motus database, supporting collaborative conservation and management across the Atlantic Flyway.
Motus Offshore Guidance Development
With support from NYSERDA, BRI researchers and partners from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, University of Rhode Island, and Birds Canada, have established a comprehensive suite of protocols and tools to guide the deployment of Motus radio-telemetry systems on offshore wind infrastructure across the U.S. Atlantic Coast.
A cornerstone of this initiative is the guidance document, which details the technical specifications and operational best practices for deploying Motus stations on offshore platforms—whether mounted to turbine structures or floating buoys. It outlines station setup, calibration, equipment configuration, maintenance routines, and metadata standards to ensure data quality and consistency.
