Watching a Golden-winged Warbler flit back and forth over your mist net when you are trying to catch it can be frustrating. Even more frustrating when you know it is carrying a geolocator you placed on its back last summer.

Audubon Vermont conservation staff placed 37 geolocators on Golden-winged and Blue-winged warblers in 2016. These small devices record the location of a bird and allow us to track them to their wintering grounds and back. The only problem is that you have to recapture them to take the geolocator off and download the data. In 2017 we recaptured 9 birds with geolocators, about what we expected to recover (although we would have loved to have found all 37).

The information is currently being analysed by project partners at the University of Maine. We hope to be able to report on our findings in the coming months. This work will provide insight into how full lifecyle conservation efforts could help these priority species in the Champlain Valley of Vermont.

Learn more about Audubon Vermont's Golden-winged Warbler Geolocation Project: http://vt.audubon.org/geo_GWWA