A Motus Receiver (also called a Motus Station) is part of the Motus Wildlife Tracking System, led by the organization Birds Canada.
The Motus Wildlife Tracking System “is an international collaborative network of researchers that use automated radio telemetry to simultaneously track hundreds of individuals of numerous species of birds, bats, and insects” (Birds Canada, 2020).
Finca Cántaros was the second location in all of Costa Rica to become equipped with the Motus Wildlife Tracking equipment, in order to monitor movement of birds and other species.
We are proud to be a part of this collaborative network—which can be described as citizen science or community science—so that we are able to collect important data about birds, bats or insects across long time periods and large distances than would otherwise be possible. This data allows us to respond better to scientific questions in many scientific fields of study, from population ecology to animal behaviour.
It also allows us to create more informed and robust conservation strategies. Motus Receivers, and the collaborations between people managing these receivers, facilitates a better understanding of the habitat needs and threats of countless species, and how we can do a better job protecting them.
To date our Motus Receiver has detected 18 individual birds, including: 13 Swainson’s Thrushes, 3 Red-eyed Vireo, and 2 Lesser Yellowlegs. You can visit the Finca Cántaros Motus Receiver page on the Motus site to check out more details about these exciting detections.
Check out our blog post on our Motus Receiver installation for more details, as well as this video specifically describing the Motus efforts in Costa Rica.
Finca Cántaros has partnered with Texas A&M University and Birds Canada to develop Motus-oriented environmental education materials.