smithsonianus with GPS to Norway

[marsmuusse]

I don't know if it has been mentioned before, I'll quote this site:
http://www.mass.gov/dcr/watersupply/wat ... /index.htm

...
Tracking Gulls Via Satellite

A small number of gulls are fitted with satellite transmitters instead of wing-tags. Several types of transmitters have been deployed: a 45-gram GPS equipped transmitter on the adult great black-back gull; 30-gram and 22-gram GPS equipped transmitters on adult herring gulls; a 20-gram non-GPS equipped satellite transmitters on herring gulls; and a 9.5-gram non-GPS equipped satellite transmitter for the ring-billed gulls. All transmitters are solar-powered and have the potential to last several years. There are currently satellite transmitters on 5 ring-billed gulls, 9 herring gulls, and 1 black-back gull.

Click on the following links to follow the flight pattern of two of these gulls. You need to have Google Earth on your computer to view this data. Each point represents one specific data point transmitted from the backpack unit to a satellite.
...

http://www.mass.gov/dcr/watersupply/wat ... /87433.kmz: Adult herring gull. Captured 11/5/08 at the Blackstone Valley Water Abatement facility, Worcester, MA. Locations are obtained with GPS technology, so these points are extremely accurate.
...

It passed Jan Mayen island, but apparently didn't reach coastal Norway? Then it travelled back to coastal US and went south to Florida. Quite a traveller.

[adriaens]

I am a bit late with this, but I checked the flight path of this bird and it does not look quite right.

The link has changed; the Google Earth file is now on http://www.mass.gov/eea/agencies/dcr/wa ... study.html.

If you look at the flight path and the data in Google Earth, it is quite funny:

On 6 Nov 2008, the bird was in Florida. 14 Nov it was supposedly somewhere in the middle of the Norwegian Sea, near Jan Mayen.
27 Nov back in Florida. Still there on 29 Nov. Then again near Jan Mayen on December 5th, but back in Florida by Dec 8th.
And best of all: on 8 February, 11:00 AM it was somewhere inland in Florida, but 6 hours later it was supposedly near Jan Mayen again!

So on the 8th of February 2009, this bird had such a craving for Norwegian fish that it left Florida and flew to Jan Mayen at the incredible speed of 1167 km/hour

[Boris Belchev]

They must putted jet engine with the GPS transmitter.

[marsmuusse]

Sorry lads,
I should have looked at the raw data better than just copying that link.
A pity after all, would have been nice to see a true Atlantic crossing in smith...

Cheers, Mars