Reprinted with permission from Forum Communications
DETROIT LAKES, Minn. — The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and Concordia College are partnering up to monitor the movement of birds throughout the state. The DNR will utilize Concordia's Long Lake Field Station just outside of Detroit Lakes.
The main focus is to track American Kestrels, which are small hawks, to better understand their movements throughout the year.
Concordia was selected because its tower is the only one capable of monitoring the northern part of the state.
"And then they had this kind of big hole up here in the more central northern area and so they reached out to us, and the site kind of works out almost perfectly for them and so it fills that gap," said Jennifer Sweatman, assistant biology professor at Concordia College.
The tower was erected a month ago outside of Detroit Lakes.
"The entire network of towers can pick up different types of birds. Songbirds and hawks, bigger birds. So, it just kind of depends on the project but it isn't specific to birds either it can also track bats and insects" she said.
Students will be able to use data collected from the DNR for research projects.
"This is a really rich data source for them to kind of tap into. So, they can access the data, they can analyze the data and they can generate their own hypothesis and test those hypotheses using this data" she said.
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