James Shepard

The traditional method for tracking parrots has been to use a kind of a big bulky brass collar to house the transmitter in. And I thought, well, no, that's just way too heavy for these little parrots.

We got pushback from our partners at OVUS who said, you know, there's no way you'll keep a transmitter on a bird. They'll just rip it off. They've basically got a can opener for a face. They'll just pluck anything that you put on them.

So it's very, very small, very, very lightweight. So obviously animal welfare and care is paramount with any kind of work that we do. We make sure that any kind of transmitter is less than about 4% of the animal's body weight.

The solar panel is fantastic because it enables us to collect data across seasons. And we know it doesn't impact the birds' survival or their flight or their breeding abilities because we've tracked birds, complete their migrations, come back up to the nesting sites, have chicks, and then head south again.