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BETSEY YORK/ODWC of Oklahoma with the Oklahoma Biological Survey. “We can receive a huge
amount of data for the tagged individuals, and that data is all freely available to
the public.”
Ross has installed multiple Motus receiver stations in Oklahoma, with the lat-
est installation at the University of Central Oklahoma’s Selman Living Laboratory,
in northwestern Oklahoma’s Woodward County. While the primary hope of this
station will be to track the seasonal arrival and departure of tagged Mexican
free-tailed bats to a nearby cave, the station will log any tagged animal that
Researchers unpack the Motus antenna and passes within a 12.5-mile radius.
tower after arriving at the new Selman Living
“My colleagues in Montana have deployed Motus transmitters on 99
Laboratory site. Sprague’s pipits, and it’s possible some of those birds could be picked up
BETSEY YORK/ODWC at this station,” Ross said. “And while there’s not a lot of shoreline in the

immediate area, tagged shorebirds like willets could still be racing through
during migration.”
The station at the Selman Living Laboratory may be new to the Motus network,
but the tower’s hardware and four of its eight antennas — operating on the “lega-
cy” frequency of 166.38 MHz — have a history with the tracking system.
“This particular setup was first used on the coast of Texas. It had served
its purpose there, so when the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center decommis-
sioned the tower, they donated it to the Oklahoma Biological Survey at the
University of Oklahoma.”
Four smaller antennas are also included in the Selman array and will operate
on the “digital” frequency of 434.0 MHz. Funding for those antennas was pro-
vided by the University of Oklahoma.
“This dual mode operation is a bit like comparing AM and FM. The two systems
Researchers assemble the Motus tower at the are using different technologies, but both have the end goal of tracking animals.”
Selman Living Laboratory.
JENA DONNELL/ODWC

The Selman Living Laboratory recently joined the international network of 1,700-plus receiver stations that detect animals tagged with the Motus Wildlife
Tracking System. More than 40,000 animals representing 327 species have been tagged to date.

22 OUTDOOR OKLAHOMA