Rainbow Lorikeets With Transmitters

I’ve just had a telephone conversation with a neighbour about the use of transmitters on birds. For some time now she has had two banded Rainbow Lorikeets carrying transmitter packs visiting the balcony of her upper level apartment in inner Sydney on a daily basis. I could not tell from her description of the packs if they were transmitters that sent signals to a hand-held receiver or to satellites. The neighbour contacted me because she did not know what these packs were, lives alone and wondered if they were miniature cameras put on lorikeets by someone who wanted to spy on her! She was initially very upset, wanted to know who she should contact about the person spying on her, but was much more relaxed once I had explained to her the purposes of animal telemetry and the reasons for its use. I know this person quite well and she is not neurotic, just highly uneducated about wildlife survey techniques. While this is a humorous story, it does demonstrate the importance for individual researchers, particularly those who conduct research in urban areas, to publicise and explain their research to the general community. Otherwise, it could lead to all sorts of misconceptions and perhaps give research a bad reputation. Stephen Ambrose Ryde NSW =============================== To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line) to: birding-aus-request@vicnet.net.au http://birding-aus.org ===============================