Back on August 4, 2025 we posted about purchasing a new type of wildlife tag that can be detected by cell phones and other IoT devices (think AirTags) as they travel. In addition, they are detectable by both the increasing numbers of Motus stations equipped to detect relatively new 2.4 GHz tags as well as home-based stations on the Terralistens network. With the help of grants from NRCS and other sources to the Kern River Audubon Preserve, including funds raised during our recent donation drive (Give Big Kern 2026), we were able to purchase 10 of these new tags. We have deployed three of the tags successfully so far on Tricolored blackbirds near the SSRS station. To our surprise we are getting a remarkable amount of data on local movements of the tagged birds.
Below is a downloadable .html widget of the mapped detections shown above that you can manipulate to see where birds have been detected and to view detections over time as you move the date/time slider. The circles represent the location of the device (mostly iPhones) when a tag was detected with ~10-30 foot accuracy. We were not expecting as many cell-phone based detections in the Kern River Valley.
The Blu+ tags are also being detected by the Terra home detector mounted on the station roof and by special “nodes” (mini Motus stations). You can purchase Terra detectors and place them on your house.
One of the Tricolored Blackbirds that was tagged during this project with a traditional Motus tag has been detected in the Central Valley (at Kern NWR and Santura Duck club Motus stations, both of which we helped install). This is exciting because it will help us understand how connected Kern River Valley populations are to the central valley populations currently being tagged by California Audubon.
Click here to learn more about the Blu+ tags:
https://celltracktech.com/pages/blu-bluseries-tag-detection-service: Testing new Blu+ tags: Results