What we don't know about bird migration that Motus reveals with Anna Buckardt Thomas | Episode 93

speaker-0: You've got this meeting, you got a bunch of you got a bunch of state agencies, you know, maybe some bureaucrats sitting in the room and we're like, We're gonna we're gonna do this big crazy thing. There would be some people that would be like, Really? Like I I I I don't I don't really know about about that. Like, how do you get how do you get over that and and build that initial momentum? Because sometimes that is the hardest thing to do is get that get them first eight stations. Like that's Once you had that and people see what this is, then it's like, hell yeah, like like yeah, we're doing that. But you got to get those first eight stations first. How how did you get to there?

speaker-1: Yeah. ⁓ so internally, you know, I had to convince, you know, my supervisor and the and the folks above me and the leadership team that this was a project that was worth ⁓ putting in a grant for. And the way that I did that was largely by arguing for the importance of the full annual cycle and understanding migration and conservation in that context, but also ⁓ based on data that we know about ⁓ the importance of Iowa for migration.

speaker-0: Great parks and healthy landscapes are the products of strong leadership. This show is dedicated to helping you become that leader. This is the Parks and Restoration Podcast. We're on a mission to help you leave a legacy of healthy ecosystems, quality parks, and future generations of people who care about the natural world. Find show notes, links, and other information on our website, ParksandRestoration.com. And now, let's get to today's episode. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Parks and Restoration Podcast. I am joined today by Anna Buckhart Thomas. She's the avian ecologist for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, and she works with the Wildlife Diversity Program. That program specializes in conservation of Iowa's wildlife species that are not hunted, fished, or trapped. Anna has a BS from Michigan Technological University, where she double majored in applied ecology and environmental science. and wildlife ecology and management. She attended the University of Maine to get her MS in wildlife ecology, where she studied American woodcock and golden winged warblers breeding in early successional forests in northern Wisconsin. In Iowa, Anna leads monitoring projects like statewide owl and night jar surveys, conducts research like GPS tracking of trumpeter swans, and, which I'm super excited to talk about today, she initiated and coordinates the MODIS Wildlife Tracking Network. So Anna, welcome to the show.

speaker-1: Thank so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

speaker-0: Yeah. So I'm excited to have this conversation. So the MODIS Wildlife Tracking System, which ⁓ you're going to tell us all about here in just a second, ⁓ is something that I find absolutely fascinating. I've seen some presentations on it and we are getting one of these tracking stations at our main park, the Hello Recreation Area here in One County, Iowa. And that's a partnership with you guys, and I'm super excited about that. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in the future here. But ⁓ tell me a little bit about the MODIS network and what it is, what it does, and then we're gonna get into some of the crazy stuff that you guys have discovered through this.

speaker-1: Sure, absolutely. So the Modus Wildlife Tracking System is operated by Birds Canada ⁓ in Ontario. And it was created in 2012. And it's a collaborative automated radio telemetry system. So what that means is ⁓ a a network of receiver stations, ⁓ tagged wildlife and ⁓ antennas. So In a telemetry system, we've got three main components. The antennas are listening, they're the ears of the system. The receivers are the brains of the system. It interprets what the what the antennas hear. And then there's the tags or the transmitters that are put on wildlife. And they're emitting a radio frequency for that antenna and receiver system to pick up. And so ⁓ kind of in traditional ⁓ wildlife telemetry, you can use this system to triangulate individuals in a study population. And each individual would have a tag or a transmitter with its own unique radio frequency. So I might tune the dial to 66.4 for this bird, and my second bird's on 66.5. what's really unique about the MODIS system is it uses this same kind of telemetry system, but it's created in a way that the tags are ⁓ digitally coded so that you can just listen to one frequency without having to change the dial. But still understand and identify unique individuals. And so ⁓ because of that, we're able to set up MODIS receiver stations that are listening to the MODIS frequency. ⁓ And then researchers across the hemisphere are using tags on wildlife all on the same frequency and sharing that information into a database that Birds Canada operates. And so Every station and every tag that are all operating on these same frequencies can then communicate to one another. So if a bird is tagged in Peru and ends up in Iowa, we would be able to detect it. ⁓ so you know, it's it's really this awesome, huge collaborative network. ⁓ and so we're really excited to be part of that and to to build our own system of receivers for this network here in Iowa.

speaker-0: Yeah. ⁓ the the the technology is fascinating. So I remember in the presentation I saw it ⁓ you said that it's like ⁓ you know, we've maybe if if you work in in wildlife management, ⁓ maybe you've used one of these or you've seen ⁓ done. It's those those big antennas that people hold, you know, and they and they wave around and you know, and they're looking for the for the animal out there. And that's set to a a particular frequency and you would have to change that frequency. And so the the I could see the The problem is putting a stationary receiver, there's nobody there to change the frequencies and you know and be like, okay, we're gonna adjust for for this one now. But having the the same frequency and then just each tag emits its own signal, it's or its or its own signature like clicks basically is how it was described. And so ⁓ correct me if I'm wrong. So this would be kind of like let's say you're you're You're in your home and back when we all still had actual terrestrial radios, you know, and we tuned our dial to ⁓ 92.1 FM frequency here. You know, it's our our local rock radio station. And a song came through and it was a rock song. You'd be like, ⁓ yeah, I know that that is DJ so and so because I know he likes to play rock. And then say a little bit later, a country song comes through, same frequency, still on 92.1. But it's a country song. Now you can be like, ⁓ I know that DJ plays country all the time, so I know that's that DJ on the other end of this receiver. This is kind of what it is, only all the different tags are just emitting a rock song or a country song or something like that, but it's not songs, obviously. It's it's clicks and and and ⁓ dashes. So ⁓ but so then that gives you the ability to identify the individual. ⁓ is that that accurate?

speaker-1: Yeah, that's a pretty good analogy. So ⁓ the code or the each of the tags is operating on the same frequency, but it has a specific pattern that it's ⁓ emitting on that frequency and the interval of that pattern is also unique. So ⁓ you know, you might have a tag that has the same pattern, but it it beeps every four seconds versus a different tag that has the same pattern, but it beeps every sixteen seconds. And so you know they're different tags because of the frequency. ⁓ and the pattern, that combination of the two is what makes those kind of unique systems. And so with all of those patterned combinations available ⁓ within the one frequency, you can identify thousands of unique individuals.

speaker-0: So and these these tags that you're you're putting on these animals, ⁓ they are very, very small. So describe those to me.

speaker-1: Yeah, so ⁓ they're pretty small. So it depends on the species you c you're putting it on. So ⁓ the system is really great for understanding long distance movements of really small wildlife. So things like bats and birds in particular. ⁓ and in the bird world, we have very strict regulations around what we can put on a bird so that we're not impacting its life. So ⁓ We have to get permits and training and ⁓ permissions through the bird banding lab, which is a US geological survey ⁓ entity. And so the general rule of thumb is you can't put a tag on a bird that's more than 3% of their body mass. And so for something as small as a warbler, for example, that's gonna be a tag that's less than half a gram. ⁓ because a warbler is something like 10 grams. So you know, this is these are very small tags. ⁓ and People always ask me, well, what about GPS units? And GPS units are wonderful and amazing and they get you really fine scale information and often very frequent. The problem is they're heavy. So you can't put a GPS unit on something ⁓ that's like less than 150 grams or maybe a little bit bigger even. So ⁓ that rules out a lot of birds and a lot of bats that don't fit that weight limit. So, you know, you can put a GPS unit on a duck. But you can't put a GPS unit on a sparrow or a warbler or a gross beak or those sorts of birds. So that's where this system then really works really well. And so this network of MODIS stations across the hemisphere, ⁓ every time that bird kind of pings between those different stations as it's making these large movements, we can pick up one little data point along its journey and really try to kind of piece those points together to understand the migration of an individual.

speaker-0: Yeah. I I love this in in so many ways. And and being that this is a a leadership focused podcast, I was thinking a lot since I've heard the presentations on this, ⁓ I was thinking a lot of how that relates to us as leaders in the in the parks conservation world, but certainly in the conservation world, of as the the world's information consolidates and and and you have seems like unlimited knowledge at your fingertips. And now even with AI, like I can just pick up my phone and I can just ask it a question and it'll just, you know, it talks to me like ⁓ you know an omniscient human ⁓ on the other end of that that phone. And it feels sometimes like we just take for granted we have all of the answers or we have access to all of the answers. And what's crazy is in this line of work in in conservation, we really don't. I mean in in science you know, in any industry for that matter. We really don't. And that that's kind of the core of of being science minded is recognizing that you that you don't have the answers. And so I love that this is built so that we can we can get some of these answers. And so I I want to dig into some of what you've learned through this process because I understand there are receivers now basically from Canada to South America and then ⁓ here in Iowa, we're really getting quite the network here. So start off by describing What's the what's the scope of the of the receiver network, both ⁓ internationally and here in Iowa? And then let's jump into some of the stuff that you've learned 'cause that's just that's fascinating stuff.

speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely. So, ⁓ as you said, the receiver network is is expanding and spans ⁓ you know, up into Canada all the way down to to countries in South America. the network first started in 2012 and it was first centered around where Birds Canada was located. So up in the Ontario region and around Lake Erie. ⁓ and then it expanded next to the northeastern part of the US. ⁓ Then there was some expansion down along the Gulf Coast area. ⁓ and around 2020, there was there were some MODIS stations, but there weren't a ton. ⁓ and from 2020 to 2025, there has just been an explosion of stations across the hemisphere. many of them in the US, ⁓ but you know, many of them are also popping up in Central and South America as well. And so we're at thousands of stations ⁓ in the in the US, which again really just means that we can learn that much more detailed information about these tiny birds that migration was really just a big question mark. We understood where they breed and we might have known where we find them in winter, but what happens in between, you know, you can't ask a bird what they're doing, right? Like it's just a big black box. So ⁓ this technology has really opened the door. To understanding that component of their life cycle in a way that we could never understand before.

speaker-0: Yeah. So was it always the goal for Bird Canada to to build out a a huge international system the way it's turning out to be? Or did it did it start out that, hey, we're gonna put these up and we're gonna kinda learn what we have here and and you know what was that the goal from the get go was to to make this thing, you know, across the hemisphere like this?

speaker-1: Yeah, so I think they came at it initially ⁓ with this large scale collaborative mindset. So it was intended to be a system where we could understand what we consider the full annual cycle of birds. So ⁓ in the kind of bird world, we think about full annual cycle as understanding, you know, the whole component of a bird's range. So a Baltimore Oreo might breed in Iowa, but where is it migrating and where is it wintering? And different timing of year, you know, what are the threats it's facing, what are the habitats it's using, is it shifting its diet? What's happening through that whole annual cycle is important to its conservation, right? Because any one component of that annual cycle could influence its survival or its population success. ⁓ and so that migratory component, ⁓ especially across the whole hemisphere, South America all the way up to Canada, was this big question mark. And so by creating this system, in a way that researchers could collaborate without even knowing each other just by entering data into a centralized location and and operating on this kind of unique ⁓ coordinated frequency, we're able to answer those questions. And so yes, I think they were always that was kind of how it was designed. ⁓ and and they're really excited to see this kind of a huge expansion in the last in the last five years or so. ⁓ so I think, you know, as they started out, they might not have have really envisioned how gr huge it could get, but they're definitely really excited and ⁓ have been keeping up on things and it's it's going great as far as I know from their perspective.

speaker-0: That that's cool. And I understand that all of the data is open sourced.

speaker-1: Yeah, so ⁓ a really cool component of this is you could go to modus.org, m-o-t-us.org, and you can look up ⁓ and you can see a map of all the stations. You can click on a station and you can see a a visual map of all the birds that have been detected there and where they came from and where they were tagged and other stations they were tagged on. You can click on a bird and you can follow its migration, you can animate it. ⁓ if you want to know about a particular species, you can search by species and find all the different tags that have ever come on on that species and look at the maps of those. You know, you can just really go down the wormhole ⁓ after wormhole. And it's amazing amount of data, an amazing resource, a lot of fun to explore, really cool stories. ⁓ in addition to the science of it, this is a really cool kind of communication and education tool to really get people excited about the connections and the the global ⁓ migrations and and how what we do here can completely impact something that's happening in Colombia, for example, just by one individual bird that's connecting us. So ⁓ yeah, it's it's just really exciting.

speaker-0: Yeah, and that was one of the things that I was excited about to get one here was not just our contribution to the scientific understanding of these species that we, you know, really don't know a whole lot about, but the education side of it. The fact that the the birds or the species that come by and are picked up by our station, we can just go online and and we can see it. So like the the education staff, the nature center staff here. I mean I I can't imagine the the fun and the the education component that that's going to have of being able to log on and and you know be like, Hey, this bird was was banded in Ontario and it came by here at this date and it was, you know, going by Des Moines at this date and and three days later it's down in Central America. Like just just the craziness that you'll be able to track that and just have all of that right there. I mean, do you think going down a YouTube wormhole is is a good time. Like I can't imagine.

speaker-1: Exactly.

speaker-0: Like you're gonna just lose hours. Like like productivity's going out the window, you open up this site for sure.

speaker-1: Absolutely. Yeah. You can get lost in it for sure. Just so for context in Iowa, we started putting up stations in 2021. and we now have 42 stations across the state. ⁓ and those are stations that are ⁓ some of them have been funded and ⁓ and owned and operated by the DNR. And many of them have been funded and are owned and operated by ⁓ partners like county conservation boards and zoos and schools and all sorts of stuff. And so it's really been this grassroots collaborative effort to build this network in Iowa. ⁓ and it's been really exciting to work with all these folks. And because we have such a high density of stations now in the state, many times when a bird gets detected in Iowa, it gets detected on several stations. And so the really cool thing about that is that oftentimes we know because of repeat, you know, repeated detections in a sequence. We can tell how fast the bird's moving, for example, or how long it stops and did it stay at a location for a while. we've detected some stop over behavior. you know, on really great windy nights, we've gotten some birds clocked in at a hundred miles an hour. So, like there's really crazy things that are happening that we can ⁓ really understand now and and tell some really cool stories about here in Iowa.

speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. I and I you don't really think about that. Like like you get a a couple of stations up and and you can detect presence. Like, okay, yeah, this you know, this bird came through here and then you know, maybe you get a date or something, like, okay, it came through this point. But having that that series of stations and being able to get that temporal aspect to it of all right, they hit this station at this time on this day, and then this station at this time on this day. Those stations are this far away, so now you can calculate speed and and and drought. And so give me some of your your Favorite stories of, you know, just some of the data that you found or some of the species that that have come through. Because I know in the in the presentations that I've seen, like I just sat back there just blown away. Like I some of the the wood thrush data that you guys had ⁓ was just astounding at how fast these these little birds. I think there was also one about it was one of the shorebirds, I think, and just how fast it traveled across the country. ⁓ just just so just share some of those with me, some of your favorites.

speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely. One one of the stories I really like to tell, which is probably one you've heard is about the lesser yellow legs. ⁓ this is a a migratory shorebird that ⁓ breeds up in the Arctic and flies through Iowa during spring and fall migration and it winters down in South America. So, ⁓ this particular individual was tagged in Columbia, the country in South America on April nineteenth in twenty twenty two. ⁓ And 18 lit days later, after it was tagged, and that was, you know, in its wintering location, after it was tagged, it was detected here in Iowa on the Missouri River ⁓ for 10 minutes. ⁓ it wasn't detected again that summer. Presumably it kept on flying north. Hopefully it had a successful breeding season up in the Arctic. And then it was detected ⁓ in southern Manitoba on July 19th, which ⁓ believe it or not is fall for some shorebirds. They're starting their fall migrations in July. Yeah. ⁓ and so That bird was detected in southwestern Manitoba and then two and a half hours later it was detected in North Dakota for forty ish minutes. ⁓ and we know because it was detected on the same night, it was traveling about eighty seven miles an hour.

speaker-0: ⁓ my gosh.

speaker-1: I know, isn't that crazy? And then it took another six or almost seven hours and it got from North Dakota to a station in Iowa near the Hawkeye Wildlife Management Area near Coralville, Iowa. And it was traveling 82 miles an hour to get from North Dakota to Iowa. ⁓ and then it was detected at a second Iowa station. ⁓ and that bird was about f 30 minutes later. And so that's the chunk of time that we know it was going a hundred miles an hour. To get between Coraville and the Odessa station down on the Mississippi River.

speaker-0: Yeah. So th that's getting into my neck of the woods. I don't you couldn't you couldn't lights and sirens, you couldn't cover that distance wide open in a in a vehicle. Like I mean, North Dakota to Coraville, like that's just north of where I'm at. And that's that, you know, if anybody's in County Conservation, that's where we have our annual conference. Like you that's no, that's not happening. That that is insane.

speaker-1: Isn't it? And I looked at the on the ground wind speed that night, and I think it was something like sixteen miles an hour. But like up in the jet stream, that bird had an excellent tailwind from the north and it was, you know, using those fuel resources it had to just book it for migration. And and the craziest thing is the next night it was detected in Tennessee and then on the coast of North Carolina. So in forty-eight hours that bird flew from at least southern Manitoba all the way to the North Carolina coast, traveling at at a minimum seventeen hundred miles in forty eight hours.

speaker-0: ⁓ my god. Like wind up.

speaker-1: Yeah. ⁓ that's a good question. They're probably somewhere around sixty or eighty grams.

speaker-0: Yeah. Is there just

speaker-1: fairly small. Yeah, probably smaller than the size of a robin. and wow. And that bird then ended up right back at the same station there where it was tagged in Columbia the winter before in in early September. So the whole like we saw the whole cycle for that bird for the year. And Iowa was part of it during both spring and fall migration, which was just incredible to un to to see ⁓ that whole big picture.

speaker-0: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. It's just it's things like that that that were it not for this system, like this this information would not exist. Like who would have ever dreamed that ⁓ you know, a little tiny bird smaller than a robin would be able to go from Manitoba to the southeast corner of the United States and then down to to Central America in that amount of time? Like that's that's insane.

speaker-1: I have no idea. Absolutely. Yeah. Can I share some more fun stories? So there's another one that I really like to tell. And ⁓ there was a ⁓ tree swallow that was tagged in Ogallala, Nebraska in the in June of twenty twenty three, where it was breeding. In the fall, September that year, it was detected at a station in Omaha and then detected at a station at Hitchcock Nature Center in ⁓

speaker-0: Please, yes. ⁓ yeah, I was just ⁓

speaker-1: In Pottawatomi County. Yep. Yep. And yeah, exactly. And so, ⁓ it was detected there and then it flew south down to Wabonsey State Park in the ⁓ southwest corner of the state. Mm-hmm. And then it was detected there basically repeatedly at that station for almost thirty days. And I was like, This tag fell off, the bird died, there's no way it's just hanging out there, something must have happened. And so I was ⁓ scheming up ways to, you know, go see if I could locate it with with local telemetry and and figuring out. And then all of a sudden it was detected in Missouri. The bird stopped over for 30 days somewhere around Wabonzi State Park and was just fueling up for its next leg of migration. Which was just incredible that we captured that that stopover and then it just happened to stop right next to a station that it was being detected the whole time. But it was just You know, those are the sorts of really cool things that we can detect.

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speaker-1: And and most of the birds that we get in Iowa are not tagged in Iowa. The majority of the birds are coming from projects, you know, all over the country, all over Canada. ⁓ we get lots of birds that come all the way from British Columbia, for example, and and fly through Iowa during fall migration, which why would you like why would you think that birds from all the way over there west way west of us, but many birds from from British Columbia come through Iowa? So ⁓ There's just some really amazing things we're finding. ⁓ but we we have started to tag a few birds in Iowa here. ⁓ and so ⁓ yeah, we've we've put some tags on wood thrush in Iowa ⁓ as our kind of first endeavor into the the tagging aspect of things.

speaker-0: Wow. I gives a whole new meaning to fly over state, right?

speaker-1: Absolutely. And and many of those birds are just flying over, but like this this tree swallow, for example, or some of these other birds, they'll stop for, you know, a couple hours or a day or so. And so we're really important to not only, you know, Midwestern birds or eastern US birds, we're important at the kind of continental scale. You know, birds coming all the way from British Columbia, we need to have migratory resources for them. You know, they're gonna fly through our state. And we need to have the habitat and the food and the shelter and all the resources they need to refuel and and continue those migrations. So ⁓ I I like to think we're super important on a global scale when we think about migration.

speaker-0: Yeah. And it it makes me think ⁓ I just had ⁓ Doug Talamy, the author of ⁓ Nature's Best Hope, and ⁓ the he's kind of the guy that popularized this whole concept of ⁓ backyard national park. And and his whole thing is we should have less yards, like l less turf and more native plantings in our in our yards. And you know, he talks about all the millions of acres of of turf there are in the in the country and everything. And and you know, his whole thing is like we we've got to put in these native plantings and just intersperse them across the entirety of the landscape because there's so many things that rely on this stuff and and you know this loss of biodiversity is is a is a real deal. And, you know, and so now I'm hearing this story about how this, you know, this one bird is stopping over for 30 days, hanging out, fueling up to finish its migration. Like, like, you know, it just happens to be at a at a state park, but for us as as park managers or or as conservation leaders or as park leaders, like, like this is this is proof in the pudding right here of how important it is that we we do right by the landscape, whether it's a municipal park, whether it's a county park, state park, national park, whatever, because there are these things happening. There's these these these these species that are coming through that we don't even we're just only barely beginning to scratch the surface of the knowledge of you know what they're doing and and where they're stopping ⁓ and just ⁓ my gosh. So ⁓ you got any more stories before

speaker-1: Well, I've got stories all day, but ⁓ I will quickly I'll talk about the wood thrush if you want to hear about that project we're working on here in Iowa. So ⁓ we started ⁓ tagging birds for the first time in Iowa in the summer of twenty twenty four. ⁓ and we did this as part of a collaboration of many states tagging wood thrush across their breeding and wintering ranges ⁓ over 2024 to 2025. So we put out twenty-seven tags in nine different sites in Iowa and we put tags out by existing MODIS stations so that when we tagged the birds, we'd be able to detect them all summer and understand when the birds left on migration because they're being detected at those stations. ⁓ and so, you know, we were able to track the that fall migration of those birds and we saw that 23 of those birds were detected during fall migration. We had birds that were detected as far south as Mexico and Belize, for example. ⁓ that's not where they stay for winter. They continued on south, but we s we got some detections during that migration. And then the next spring, we got those birds as they returned. And so, we had about ⁓ you know, we had, I think it was like 15 of those birds came back to Iowa and 14 of them were detected right back at the spot that we we tagged them the summer before. So Based on that, we understand, like we learned when the birds are leaving. So ⁓ if you think about a wood thrush, if you're a birder or if you have heard that song before, it goes quiet in the woods. We don't really hear wood thrush after August. But these birds were sticking around till late September, early October, ⁓ in the same places where we tagged them. So we're not hearing them or seeing them as much, but they're still there ⁓ into early, early October in many cases. And they'll come back as early as late April. So ⁓ we're learning that timing based on based on this tagging effort that we've made. ⁓ and you know, it's it's been really cool. Now we've got a second year of of tags ⁓ deployed in in 2025. And so ⁓ we've been able to see for those initial birds in 24, their tags lasted long enough to get, at least for some of them, a second fall migration. So we can see if there's differences in timing or patterns of. of where they're going ⁓ to some extent between the two years and then ⁓ you know see them return again in the in this spring for that that final time. ⁓ there was one really cool bird that came back. It was I think it was a bird that was detected or tagged at Hitchcock actually, but it came back and was first detected in the southeast corner of the state over at ⁓ Geode State Park. And then it was detected at several stations in central Iowa and then all the way back over to Hitchcock. So we could see that it was like redirecting and it knew exactly where it needed to go, even though it might not have been taking the most direct route there. It was like, ⁓ look, I need to tangle left and get back to where I'm supposed to be breathing. It's just amazing that they can key in on the same exact territory year after year.

speaker-0: ⁓ I just I hearing this, I just I cannot wait to get the motor station here in Des Moines County and and to be able to share these stories through education programs and like like to just like to to talk about the just the incredible phenomenon that that is that that a little tiny bird can figure out to travel across the hemisphere and then come back to the exact same spot it was at last year. I got lost in University of Iowa Medical Center. a couple of weeks ago. Like I couldn't find my way out of the damn building for crying out loud. And, you know, here's these birds that are traveling internationally and and showing up reliably, you know, exactly where they how I mean, come on. Like sounding. I just ⁓ the the stories and the and the the education that can come from this is just it it ⁓ I'm so excited about this. So I I I gotta know one, why Wood Thrush of of all the things that you could have tagged, why them?

speaker-1: It's incredible. It's incredible. Sure. So ⁓ this project was initially coordinated by a researcher at the at the Fish and Wildlife Service. And ⁓ so wood thrush were selected because they're a common bird that we consider in steep decline. So they're ⁓ they're still common, but they're far fewer of them than there used to be. So ⁓ in since nineteen seventy, I think we've lost ⁓ something like ⁓ 40% of the population or something like that. And so ⁓ there's still many of them, and they're still and and they're a fairly easy bird to catch, which helps for a large scale project. Because they're in such steep decline there, and because so many states have considered them a species of greatest conservation need in our Iowa in our wildlife action plans. Every state has a wildlife action plan and we list us a set of species that are greatest conservation need. ⁓ this was a species that was greatest conservation needed in 25 states. And so it was it was a kind of low-hanging fruit, so to speak, to say, let's collectively see what we can learn in just two field seasons. And so I think we put out something like 1200 tags collectively across the whole breeding range. ⁓ okay. And so I ⁓ you know, we have our little sample of 37 birds, but across the whole breeding range, now we can understand are there patterns in terms of connectivity like Are all the birds from the northeast going to a specific spot to winter versus the birds in the Midwest, or or are they mixing on their wintering ground? And and to that effect, ⁓ there's a really cool story that one of our birds was detected at a station in Belize. And when I was just playing around with the, you know, loads of data that's available on the Motus website, I clicked on the station and I realized that it had detected wood like over a hundred wood thrush from mm like 17 of the states that were tagging birds. And so this location in Belize, of course Central America's pretty narrow, but this location in Belize is funneling a ton of these birds during migration. And so, you know, if we're thinking about conservation of the species at a global scale, we know that this corridor of of area is really important for the whole population of breeding wood thrush. And so if we need to make conservation decisions about, you know, protecting habitat or reducing threats during migration, that's a place we can key in on based on data that we have from the MOTA system.

speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. And and that's that's exactly the kind of data that that we wouldn't have otherwise been able to get were it not for something like this. And it just ⁓ my gosh.

speaker-1: And we might have been able to count that there's a lot of wood thrift there, but we wouldn't have known where they breed or where they're coming from or when they're leaving. And now we have all those pieces of the puzzle.

speaker-0: Right. Yeah. You now you see that as not just a you know, it's got a big population, but it's a it's actually a funnel, which is gonna you know, that's that's a different conservation story than it is just, ⁓ we've got a good population here. Like okay, okay, well, you know, why do they have so many birds versus other places? And so that's it's a it's a gives you a different way to look at things. That's that's wonderful. So you initiated the the MODIS effort here in Iowa. What's ⁓ what was your motivation for doing that? Other than it's just freaking awesome.

speaker-1: It's really awesome. ⁓ so I was part of a ⁓ multi-state grant ⁓ that was led by Missouri. And ⁓ there was about five states in the Midwest that we collectively said we need to create an infrastructure of stations in the Midwest, because in twenty twenty there was kind of nothing here. We had no stations. ⁓ and we know that the Midwest is a really important migratory corridor for birds. So ⁓ we wanted to, you know, start some infrastructure here. And so ⁓ we were part of that collaboration. And from that initial funding, we were able to put up our first eight stations in Iowa. And I think that funding collectively put up about 50 stations in the Midwest. ⁓ and that really just was the spark that ⁓ that's all we needed here in Iowa to get the ball rolling was that first initial ⁓ eight stations or so. Then I went to Winterfest and everybody heard how cool this was and people started saying, I want one of those. And ⁓ a station itself is exactly is relatively inexpensive. If you think about it's about like five to seven thousand dollars to put the equipment up and then it's up and running for, you know, the next ten years. And so and it's pretty low maintenance once it's up and running. ⁓ And, you know, after doing my eight stations, I had the technical know how to help people who had the the locations and the funds to put up stations. I could say, okay, I'll help you figure out how what you need to buy and how you need to put it up and and ⁓ it was an easy way for me to say to to provide that assistance and then to create these collaborations where we've been able to really ⁓ expand that that number of stations here in the state. So ⁓ I think we're We're nearing forty five stations now. So ⁓ it's been it's been a really rewarding last five years of of ⁓ modus work.

speaker-0: Yeah. So where'd that initial funding come from? Was that

speaker-1: That was a an initial that was a Fish and Wildlife Service ⁓ State Wildlife Competitive Grant. Yep. So ⁓ yeah, and and since then we've we've now gotten a second ⁓ competitive grant that we're using to ⁓ host a graduate student who's doing more specific work with wood thrush on the western side of the state. ⁓ she's she's putting modus tags on them, but she's also understanding breeding. breeding ecology. So she's doing a bunch of nest searching and she's linking breeding success to migration to understand if birds that have successful nests or not successful nests, if the timing of migration changes. And she's also focusing on ⁓ tagging females where we tagged mostly males. So ⁓ she's kind of expanding on the work that we started. And that again was another another grant that's allowed us to continue that work.

speaker-0: Yeah. I mean, just the fact that the data exist is going to open up so many more opportunities for ⁓ for for research. Like like just just gleaning information from the data, you know, th that that there's this growing this ever growing database of all this stuff and looking at it from different angles and then building research projects off of that. Like the the way the the ripple effect of this is is enormous. I want to go all the way back to the beginning. So you said several states got together and like, hey, we we you know we need to get a whole system of these things out there. That's that's kind of a big, hairy, audacious thing. Like, like, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna put these motor stations all over the, you know, all over the continental US or all over the Midwest. How what I wanna know from from your perspective. So obviously you were you were part of that conversation. I have to believe that that someone above you in the org chart had to say, yeah, let's do that, versus all the bajillion of other things, the infinite other things that a state agency could do that, you know, would certainly contribute to science or contribute to wildlife management or to, you know, species diversity and all that kind of stuff. Like there's there's any number of things they could do. How how how did you sell this or or did you even have to? I mean, was it like, ⁓ man, this thing's amazing. Let's jump into this. Like like how did those conversations go? Because that's what I'm interested in is is these last conversations I've had on this show. Have been like, it's been talks about these crazy big things. And, you know, my last episode was was just about this big riverfront festival we just put on. And the title of it is Don't Tell Me What I Can't Do. Right. And yeah, I I would I because I could see it. You've got this meeting, you got a bunch of, you got a bunch of state agencies, you know, maybe some bureaucrats sitting in the room, and we're like, we're gonna, we're gonna do this big crazy thing. There would be some people that would be like, really? Like I I I I don't I don't really know about about that. Like how how do you get how do you get over that and and build that initial momentum? Because sometimes that is the hardest thing to do is get that get them first eight stations. Like that's once you had that and people see what this is, then it's like hell yeah. Like like yeah, we're doing that. But you gotta get those first eight stations first. How how did you get to there?

speaker-1: Yeah. ⁓ so internally, you know, I had to convince, you know, my supervisor and the and the folks above me and the leadership team that this was a project that was worth ⁓ putting in a grant for. And the way that I did that was largely by arguing for the importance of the full annual cycle and understanding migration and conservation in that context, but also ⁓ based on data that we know about ⁓ the importance of Iowa for migration. So I don't know if folks on your podcast are familiar, but the birdcast ⁓ website is this thing from Cornell Lab of Ornithology and some partners that they can actually look at weather radar data that detects not only rain, but it can also detect migrating birds. So they can filter out all the weather And actually understand the volume of birds migrating on a particular night or over a particular migratory season. And so, ⁓ you know, I every once in a while I would look at this birdcast thing, and there would be nights where we'd get lots and lots of birds, millions of birds flying to Iowa. And they they came out with this compiled figure of the migration of the fall of 2021, and it shows the Numbers for only the five states that have the highest volume of migration of any state in the lower 48. And we're one of those states. So in the fall of 2021 and consistently every fall, we get almost a billion birds flying through Iowa. Right. So from a global bird conservation perspective. We are seeing a huge amount of birds. And so we are inevitably supporting a big chunk of those birds during migration during that critical time period. But we didn't understand who was flying through or when they were flying through or how long they were stopping. And so, you know, for a relatively small ask of, you know, I want eight stations in Iowa, I could get at, you know. many of the species of greatest conservation need and this whole time frame that we didn't understand at all. And so that was kind of my pitch to leadership. And my my role was, you know, we're important from the summer breeding bird perspective, but we are hugely important at a continental scale during migration. We know that based on on real scientific numbers. And I really want to understand what's happening here. And so In addition to that pitch, I developed a kind of strategy for how we would put these stations across the state so that we can maximize our understanding kind of at the scale of how birds are moving through the state. So the priority is to have this kind of central fence through the middle of the state and then to border the Mississippi and Missouri rivers so that we can understand how how birds and and bats are using those big ⁓ corridors along the rivers. But then if we eventually get this fence through the middle of the state, we're gonna get every basically every bird that flies through the state that has a tag on it. And so we're nearing that vision now with these 40 some stations that we have. ⁓ and and at this point we've gotten, you know, ⁓ as of 2025, we've gotten over 900 detections of, you know, 400 some individual birds of 45 different species. And so, you know, It's working, right? Like we are yeah, we're understanding and ⁓ we're starting to understand how ⁓ some patterns about how the birds are working in Iowa, but then just think about all the researchers who put all the tags on all those birds and all the individual questions that they're answering that we're helping to answer. You know, they're asking all these really interesting and important questions for conservation, and we are helping them answer those questions. And so ⁓ yeah. That's that's my pitch and and hopefully it's living up to living up to that.

speaker-0: Yeah, I it's I mean, I'm excited just hearing it. Like I mean, if I was in a leadership position at that agency, it'd be like, Hell yeah, that that makes absolute sense. It's it's so what I'm hearing is is you took you took something that that you showed that we were already important in a particular way or that we already had a strength in a particular way. Like there there are more birds that come across this state. I mean, they're literally being detected by radar. And we don't No, we don't understand what's happening. And and it's it's taking like like we already know we're important. We just don't know to what degree. Like we already know we have this strength. Let's double down on that. Let's let's try to understand that. Let's try to build on that. And and it's it's it's not it's not just taking it from scratch. Like if we're like if we had zero idea what our what our position was as far as a migratory state, we did we didn't know even a have any idea whatsoever how many birds were were coming across the state. That would have been a harder pitch. But the fact that we already kind of had this this data like, I mean, literally being picked up by radar and we know I mean there's there might be a billion birds coming across the state in the course of a migration. Like, ⁓ well that's that's already kind of something. And and then to to build on that, that is a that is a much easier sell, I would imagine, than like, well, we don't we don't even begin to know what we are you know, what we mean for the migration of species, ⁓ let's let's try to start figuring that out. Like that's that's a much bigger lift. And so ⁓ I think that was that was absolutely brilliant was being able to just build on that that primitive knowledge base and then to be able to show look look what this is going to be able to do for us and then and then to go out there and execute, get those out there and then start building on that data. Like, I mean, once you start seeing some of this data, you you you can't not want more of these stations out there.

speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely. The stories the stories tell themselves and and get people excited all on their own. I I don't have to do much once, you know, once we have some data, it's it's been really exciting and people are just in awe and wanna help learn more. So it's been really awesome.

speaker-0: So I a couple more questions. ⁓ how how far do these stations reach or how far can they detect?

speaker-1: Mm, yeah. So ⁓ it depends on the exact setup of a station, but the stations in Iowa, ⁓ there's two companies that make MODIS tags and they work on two different frequencies. So all of the stations in Iowa are dual listening. They listen to both tag frequencies so that any tag on any project we should theoretically be able to detect if the bird comes within range. And we have most of our stations have ⁓ four antennas, two of each frequency, and they typically are they're directional antennas and they typically face east and west as best as we can given the topography and you know the specific system that we're working in. And we are because we're focused on migration data and not local information, we use long-range antennas. So our stations can detect ⁓ theoretically up to about nine miles away in one direction. So ⁓ if you get a station that's ⁓ totally east-west, we've got about an 18 mile spread. of airspace that we're detecting in. And so ⁓ this fence concept, you know, placing these stations every, you know, forty miles or so, we should be able to then basically cover the whole airspace in a straight line across the state and understand that how birds are moving moving across that fence.

speaker-0: Wow. So are there any ⁓ any obvious gaps in in this fence? I ⁓ when you show that that graphic of of like the I eighty corridor across the center of the state, like you know, fencing that off, like, ⁓ yeah, you're gonna catch anything coming northwest and then going up and down the the river corridors 'cause we know how important the rivers are. I'm I'm you know, growing up right here on the Mississippi, I know how important this flyway is. And so, you know, that makes perfect sense to go up and down the rivers, you know, we're we're a state ⁓ you know, it's got rivers on both our shores. ⁓ so are there any any big gaps that that would be priority to fill.

speaker-1: Yeah, so ⁓ over the last couple of years we've focused at the DNR on filling in the Missouri River corridor. And that was part of ⁓ so we had funding for MOTI stations from a really generous donation. And so we use that to leverage funds to get this wood thrush research done. So ⁓ we use station deployment as match for that grant, and so we put up ⁓ four stations along the Missouri River. And collaborated with Nebraska, who also got funding to do bat research through this grant. ⁓ and they put up a bunch of stations along the Missouri River and the Nebraska side. And so collectively now we've got pretty much the whole stretch from ⁓ you know, council bluffs all the way down to the to the southern border of the state and and beyond ⁓ is pretty much covered. I think there's one little gap in in Sioux County, which we're working on getting a station up there this fall. So ⁓ the Mississippi River is pretty filled in. ⁓ we started initially on the kind of central fence. Our first five stations were on that central fence. Five stations wasn't enough. There were lots of holes, but those holes have been filled in over time. the majority of the gaps left, there's a f there's maybe a two or three county gap ⁓ in western western Iowa ⁓ that we're working on filling. And then we're gonna head back over to the Mississippi River as our next kind of final push. ⁓ and that's where Des Moines County comes in and we're working with ⁓ some other folks. ⁓ we just got a station up on the John Deere factory in Davenport. So ⁓ we're working on some finish finishing up that line there. So ⁓ yeah, we're we're probably within 10 stations of of like realizing that vision of a complete fenced in through the middle and then along the river. So ⁓ we're really excited over the next two years we should we should knock that out.

speaker-0: Wow. That's that's that is fantastic. And and you started this win?

speaker-1: 2021 was our first stations went up in this August of 21. Yep. Farther than I could ever have imagined. ⁓ my gosh. Yeah. My initial grant desk was five stations, and ⁓ the funding stretched farther, and I could do seven and a half, and then I got a small grant to make it a full eight. And then from there, partners have just really, really made it so that we've expanded our station network ⁓ so incredibly fast. And

speaker-0: It's

speaker-1: It's been awesome to work with so many people of and who are interested in this ⁓ this research and this storytelling and the education component. And ⁓ you know, it's it's gotten me some really cool opportunities to visit different parts of the state and work with different ⁓ organizations to make this happen. So it's been a a huge collaborative effort and I appreciate anyone who's helped or listened to me give a talk on MODIS or given me ideas about station locations. It's it's all been really, really rewarding and we're getting awesome, awesome data from it.

speaker-0: That yeah. I I know I'm I'm certainly fascinated with and I and I can't wait till we get one here and and you know be able to just use our own data and just use our you know our little blip on on the map and and tell that story of how we fit into this this you know global scale of of you know species movement it's just it's crazy. So ⁓ I'll add with this. What ⁓ would be one request you have of listeners? So the most of the listeners to this are ⁓ in the parks and conservation sphere. So, you know, ⁓ it might be city parks, might be county parks, state parks, and then ⁓ you know, natural resource people. ⁓ what what would be a kind of parting request that you would have ⁓ for any of us that, you know, ⁓ maybe some of us probably have influence directly on the landscape, but ⁓ a lot of us may not, but we may just have, you know, interest in in this kind of thing. ⁓ what what would be your What would be your your parting request for those of us in the parks and conservation sphere?

speaker-1: Yeah. ⁓ great question. ⁓ on the MODIS front, tell the story and get people excited. Like this data's out there. Go to the MODIS website, see what cool stories are or local connections you can make and get other people excited about bird migration and then tell them how they can act to help bird migration, whether it's planting an oak tree in their yard or making sure they have some native landscaping or ⁓ you know. working at a field day to remove invasive species at their local park or whatever it is, I like to inspire people and then give them some action items that they can do. And so I'd encourage all of you to do the same. ⁓ I like to remind people that ⁓ you know, we are really important in migration. So we need to provide those migratory resources. In fall migration, a lot of that is, you know, like native shrubs for berries and insects and stuff. So ⁓ you know, tell the stories, hook them in, and then give ⁓ some actions to do to support the the whole bigger picture.

speaker-0: Yeah. I I like that. It it just it seems like every time I turn around, I'm seeing more and more reasons to to plant more native species. And you know, like it's one thing to just know that it impacts the the species that you see regular. It's something else entirely to know that those species may have a a significant impact on on some bird or or or some species that's that's migrating through here and might just be here for twenty four hours or less. Might be just stopping by, getting, you know, getting a quick fill up, get a quick fuel or or or pausing to, you know, wait out the rain and then heading back up and grabbing the jet stream and heading on down to Florida or something like that. Like it's like that stuff that we don't see sometimes we're having an outsized impact on. We don't even know it. And and so just just Yeah, I I just I that's why I was looking forward to having this conversation because there's there's so many nuances to this that it's it's just it's showing us a different picture than what we than what a lot of us think about. You know, it's just it's wow. If somebody wanted to get in touch with you, ⁓ maybe for a presentation or just to learn some more, ⁓ what how where would they best do that?

speaker-1: Absolutely. Yeah, ⁓ you can get a hold of me through my ⁓ DNR web email or or phone number. Those are both online. You can search me Anna Buckart Thomas at Iowa DNR.

speaker-0: And then ⁓ for the ⁓ MODIS data, that was what was the site for that one?

speaker-1: It was modus.org, m-o-t-us dot org. And if you click on explore data, you'll find a map of all the stations in the in the world. ⁓ and you can click around at stations or you can explore by species or by project. ⁓ just go down a wormhole, have fun with it.

speaker-0: So cool. Yeah. It is. Well, Anna, thank you so much for taking the time to chat and sharing these stories. ⁓ and for all the work you've done. I thank you for, you know, for initiating this thing here in Iowa and and running with this. I know this has been no small lift and and ⁓ you know, obviously it's a passion project for you, but ⁓ I'm sure it hasn't been ⁓ a small amount of work to get, you know, a a whole series of stations all the way across the state. That's that's astounding. So thank you for what you do. ⁓ and and for taking the time to share that story with us here today.

speaker-1: Thank you so much, Chris. It's been a really great pleasure to talk about it so much and and share with all your listeners.

speaker-0: Absolutely. And to everybody listening, thank you for tuning in. Thank you for what you do, whether it is in parks and conservation or just in showing some affinity for those type things. And be sure next time you get a chance to go plant a native species somewhere. So with that, we'll close out. Thank you again and take care. This episode was produced by the great team at Layover Productions. Please subscribe wherever you're tuning in and follow Parks and Restoration on Facebook and Instagram. You can connect with us and other outdoor leaders by joining the next level leadership community at parksandrestoration.com.