170432 in Spain not Sicily

We thought 170432 was close to Sicily but having transmitted over the sea and not having moved onwards to land this raised a few questions! We took another look at the signals, all of which were of low quality, and found a much more likely scenario from another transmission - he was on land and actually in Spain. Some of you may have noticed the position has since been updated. 

The new tags are working in a different way to those used previously so we are still getting used to this. The 2g tag has a lower power output than the larger tag and because it is physically smaller we are finding that the solar panels are being covered to a greater extent by the bird’s feathers. This results in fewer and poorer quality locations, especially when the bird is under cover within its habitat, so more interpretation is needed.  This is new cutting edge technology and this is the first time we've trialled them. The successful development and deployment of these tags opens up exciting opportunities for future tracking projects, and would allow us to fit them to lighter and smaller birds.  Please bear with us while we get used to the new types of information we are receiving.