Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
At sunrise on a Virginia farm, an Eastern Bluebird gets fitted with a tiny GPS tag, recording its movements every ten minutes as it travels between nest boxes, fence posts, and pastures.
By tracking these daily movements, Smithsonian's Virginia Working Landscapes team is mapping how bluebirds move across working farms and in collaboration with the University of Maryland's Department of Entomology and the National Zoo’s Center for Conservation Genomics, exploring these birds’ role in natural pest control.
Read the full story to explore how bird tracking is helping us understand grassland ecosystems at every scale: https://s.si.edu/4rl5k0q
At sunrise on a Virginia farm, an Eastern Bluebird gets fitted with a tiny GPS tag, recording its movements every ten minutes as it travels between nest boxes, fence posts, and pastures.
By tracking these daily movements, Smithsonian's Virginia Working Landscapes team is mapping how bluebirds move across working farms and in collaboration with the University of Maryland's Department of Entomology and the National Zoo’s Center for Conservation Genomics, exploring these birds’ role in natural pest control.
Read the full story to explore how bird tracking is helping us understand grassland ecosystems at every scale: https://s.si.edu/4rl5k0q
