Flight Tracks of Homing Pigeons Measured with GPS

Karen von Hünerbein, Wolfgang Wiltschko, Eckhard Rüter
2001 Journal of navigation  
Flight paths of homing pigeons were measured with a newly developed recorder based on GPS. The device consists of a GPS receiver board, a logging facility, an antenna, a power supply, a DC-DC converter and a casing. It has a weight of 33g and works reliably with a sampling rate of 1/s with an operation time of about 3 h, providing time-indexed data on geographic positions, ground speed and altitude. The data are downloaded when the bird is recaptured. The devices are fixed to the birds with a harness.
doi:10.1017/s0373463301001345 fatcat:otf3lz4bdvg45a3ku3fdgb62su