Resent study, we released pigeons at two web-sites, 1 within the rather irregular magnetic Vogelsberg anomaly, the other within a magnetically “quiet” area, and recorded their tracks with GPS-based flight recorders. Our analysis focuses around the comparison of your behavior at the starting in the homing PubMed ID:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20181482 flight, due to the fact inside the Vogelsberg anomaly, our pigeons seem to offer up magnetic cues in favor of other, non-magnetic factors prior to leaving the anomaly (Wiltschko et al. 2009, 2010).1. Oberlais (504 N, 96 E), 44.8 km northeast of the loft; house direction, 225 inside the Vogelsberg anomaly, an region with robust, irregular fluctuations in MedChemExpress KIRA6 intensity and steep neighborhood magnetic gradients in varying directions, together with the release point about 10 km from the edge of your anomaly within the homeward path. In the release point, the intensity was 133 nT above the 1 in the loft. two. Essenheim (497 N, 88 E), 42.two km southwest in the loft; household direction, 61 the control web-site in magnetically “quiet” terrain, exactly where the magnetic intensity changes quite little in all directions; in the release point, it was 5 nT above the 1 in the loft. The nearby magnetic circumstances about the two web pages are illustrated in Fig. 1, primarily based on magnetic intensity data for 100100 m squares displaying the deviations in the reference field (DGRF 1980.0) provided by the Leibniz Institute of Applied Geophysics. The two web pages are identical to the web sites A2 and C2 of our preceding study (Wiltschko et al. 2010). Test birds The test birds have been adult pigeons from our Frankfurt loft (508 N, 80 E). The magnetic situations at the loft, 57 nT beneath the reference field inside a magnetic minimum, are given in detail in Wiltschko and Wiltschko (2003a). The birds were at the least 1 year old. In their initially year of life, they had completed a regular coaching program as much as 40 km inside the cardinal compass directions and had been also released for many education flights up to 30 km in spring each and every year. All had completed added training flights as much as 20 km carrying dummy weights to prepare them for carrying the GPS recorder, had participated in earlier tracking experiments from many web-sites, and hence had ample expertise in flying with the recorder. Within the present study, all pigeons were unfamiliar with the release web-sites, i.e., they had in no way homed from these precise web-sites just before. GPS tracking devicesMaterials and solutions The experimental releases were performed in August 2009 and June and July 2010, following a smaller pilot study in August 2007 and May well 2008, with all the 3 tracks of this pilot study included in the analysis. Release web pages We employed two release web pages situated in about equal distance in virtually opposite directions; each web pages lay in rural regions, together with the nearest village in equivalent distances and directions in the dwelling path: The GPS recorders utilized in this study were based on the prototype developed by von H erbein et al. (2000), with either an embedded patch antenna or maybe a Y-antenna in addition to a data logger as extra components. The weight like the battery ranged from 35 g within the pilot study to 23 g used later. The recorder was set to take a positional fix every second, with a precision of m within the older models and .eight m within the recent models. After the receivers had contact using a sufficient variety of satellites, they had been wrapped in plastic to shield them from water and attached for the pigeons’ backs by indicates of a harness created from Teflon tape (see Wiltschko et al. 2007 for deta.
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