Dear Tweetsters,

Have you checked out the Falcon Research Group website www.frg.org ?
Bud Anderson wrote a few weeks back about the Southern Cross Project. A team of FRG volunteers went down to Chile and outfitted seven Peregrine Falcons with solar powered satellite transmitters that will allow us to follow their migration progress.

I have been checking the site every night, and especially since the first of the females started heading north, I've had to pace myself. I only get to look at her progress after all my "chores" are done, because before I know it, an hour is gone.

It is absolutely phenomenal. The frg site will give you a nice map with markers that show the bird's progress. You can open labels that will give information on time, heading, speed and now number of kilometers since the previous mark (the male transmitters are not GPS, so they don't include heading and speed). This female (dubbed "Arena") has covered more than 2400 km since she started early April. But when you open the Google Earth page (install the free client, it's worth it)....this is where it gets really interesting. You can actually "soar" through the landscape and follow the birds' travel.

Yesterday around 2 PM (her time) "Arena" was sitting at 69 feet above the Pacific Ocean's surf on a small promontory near Pucusana, Peru. I envisioned the tide out and resting migrant shorebirds below. Or perhaps she had just caught a bird and was devouring it there.

As you follow the route (assuming the bird went in a straight line between data point, which she probably didn't) you (I at least) get a whole new sense for what it means, to migrate a few thousand miles.

My hat's off to the FRG volunteers who went down to Chile to trap and outfit the birds, and to the geniuses behind-the-scenes who are making all this information available to us, practically in real time.

I can't wait for some of the other birds to head north.

Check it out. It's not the same as watching birds outside, but it is a very enlightening way to learn about migration.

(Disclosure: I am an FRG volunteer. While I don't have anything to do with this particular project I guess you could call me biased....)

Martin Muller, Seattle
martinmuller at msn.com