Swallow-tailed Kite Tracking
Friends of the Lower Suwannee & Cedar Keys NWRs provides support for the Avian Research and Conservation Institute (ARCI) to track Swallow-tailed Kites on the Refuge and learn about their migration patterns. ARCI uses GPS-transmitters to track 11 Swallow-tailed Kites from breeding populations in Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana. Most of these Kites are carrying cell-phone technologies that upload their location data when they are able to connect with a cell-phone tower. Since the kites pass through many remote areas, opportunities to upload their locations are spotty. The good thing is that they store all their location data indefinitely, so when they do connect, the information comes streaming in.

The first Kite Friends supported in 2019 was dubbed 'Suwannee'. He is a male Swallow-tailed Kite and his transmitter tracked his migration from the Refuge to his wintering area in Brazil and back for about 3 years before the batteries in his transmitter started to fail.

Suwannee II was tagged in 2022 and is a female. She is wearing updated transmitter technology which will hopefully last longer. We look forward to following her journeys.

Dr. Ken Meyer, ARCI executive director, gave a fascinating talk about their work tracking raptors at the Friends 2020 annual meeting.