the clash | 201The ability to monitor tagged birds, via base stations placed in the
colony to collect information on their comings and goings, and report
remotely to a desk- bound researcher, will become ever more refined. I
am not altogether certain that receiving a torrent of information on a
computer screen will compensate for the pleasure and pain of handling
an irate Puffin, with horridly sharp bill and claws, amid the slime, the
smell, and the sheer life- affirming exuberance of a puffinry. However,
knowledge of tagged species will certainly improve.
A changing world means colonies are likely to shift location and change
in size. Such changes can be assessed in the traditional way, by painstak-
ingly counting birds and by ground- based mapping of the area occupied.
There is also the modern alternative, using drones and satellites.
One might think that drone counts would be less accurate than those
obtained by experienced researchers who get up close and personal on the
ground. This notion was comprehensively overturned by the recent work
of Monash University biologists.^31 The team flew a $1,500 octocopter
drone over three breeding colonies of Crested Terns and five of Lesser
Frigatebirds on islands off the Kimberley region of north- western Aus-
tralia. They also went south to sub- Antarctic Macquarie Island where a
$3,000 fixed- wing drone flew above three crowds of moulting Royal
Penguins. During the drones’ flights, which lasted between 4 and 20 min-
utes, the onboard camera took photos of the birds every two to three
seconds. After the images were merged, the birds were counted on com-
puter screens — and the counts compared with those obtained on the
ground by observers who visited the colonies to count the birds in the
flesh at the very same time as the drone flights. Crucially the birds showed
no signs of alarm as the drones flew overhead. Equally important, the
counts obtained from drones showed less variation. That greater preci-
sion of the drone counts means that any changes in colony numbers, due
to long- term changes in the environment, can be more reliably assessed.
The drone technique of course requires knowledge of the whereabouts
of the colony. Such knowledge will not be available if, for example,
Sooty Terns are shifting from an atoll swamped by sea level rise to an-
other one, or if Emperor Penguins need to relocate their colony by tens
of kilometres. However, these upheavals could be detected if seabird
colonies were visible from space. They are.