Date: 10/21/25 11:44 am From: Diane Morton <dianegmorton...> Subject: [cayugabirds-l] Cayuga Bird Club Fall Motus detections - 5 migratory birds and 2 bats!
The Cayuga Bird Club operates two Motus stations for detection of
radio-tagged migratory birds -- one receiver at Myers Point and the other
atop Mount Pleasant. See
https://motus.org/dashboard/#e=profile&d=projects&s=301 for a complete list
of all 27 species (41 individuals) that we have detected since 2019.
This fall our Motus station at Myers Park has detected 3 migratory birds
and our station at Mount Pleasant detected 2 birds and 2 Silver-haired
Bats!
The furthest flying migrant was a Wood Thrush, tagged in Honduras last
March. It was detected in Georgia in April but then disappeared from the
Motus network during the summer months. It reappeared, flying past our
Mount Pleasant station on September 27 and continued south, last reported
in Georgia on October 10. It will be interesting to see if it continues on
to Central America.
The detection of a migrating Least Bittern at Myers Park was a nice
surprise, as it is not a commonly seen bird here. The Least Bittern that we
detected was tagged in Quebec in the summer and then It is interesting to
note that there is a report from a night flight call session, also on
September 12, recording two Least Bitterns flying over Palmer Woods.
Two Sharp-shinned Hawks tagged at Braddock Bay on Lake Ontario last April
were detected this fall, one by each receiver, just 1 day apart from one
another.
New for our Motus project was the detection of two Silver-haired Bats.
Silver-haired bats are a migratory species of tree bats that nest in tree
cavities or behind bark, and move to warmer habitats for the winter. These
bats were tagged on the north shore of Lake Erie near the end of August,
and detected about a week later by our Mount Pleasant receiver. See the
zig-zagging path of one of these bats here:
https://motus.org/dashboard/#e=profile&d=animals&s=66909.
Below is the list of our Fall Motus detections this far. There is a lag
between data upload and appearance on the Motus website, so it is possible
that we will soon learn of additional hits by our Motus stations. Each of
these detections helps researchers to better understand the timing and
trajectory for individual birds of different species (and other animals!)