Orkney Bird Tracker Recovered in Ealing
Holidaymaker Mike German had picked up device on a beach
One of the recently hatched chicks. Picture: Steph Trapp/BBC
The hunt for the person from Ealing who picked up a GPS tracker used to monitor migrating birds has ended.
The team from the University of Exeter, who had fitted the device to an oystercatcher, were keen to retrieve it and could identify its location within a small area of residential streets. Despite national press coverage and a reward being offered nobody had come forward. An Ealing woman, hearing about the lost tracker, offered to help out by posting leaflets in the area where the researchers thought it might be.
The device, which had been tracked through various locations including a pizza restaurant, had been picked up on a beach by Mike German who was on a three week holiday in Orkney.
He told BBC Radio Orkney, "I found it near a fence post on Sanday when we spent a morning there looking round the dunes and walking across the beach.
"It was a dull sort of day, but it had been very blustery the night before, so we thought we'd get some fresh air and make the most of Sanday - which is a beautiful island.
"I just suddenly saw this item, and I thought: 'Ooh, I wonder what that is'. l just thought it was something that had dropped off a boat's buoy or something. I never thought it was a tracker.
"I picked it up and put it in my pocket, then in my little bag with the shells I'd picked up from the beach."
When he received the leaflet, he was unsure where he had left the tracker but eventually found it in his living room.
He is now making arrangements to return the device to the researchers.
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June 22, 2022