We want to monitor nest and ambient temperature on the tundra, but have just been informed that they have again delayed our order and it won't arrive until AFTER our field season.
Hi Melanie,
Bummer about the ibuttons. I worked with a Canadian company some years ago that sell loggers that should meet your needs. The company is Alpha Mach (alphamach.com). They were very responsive and had some high quality products. I think what I used were called ib-krill tags. They also now have what is called a WeeTag--these are RF&RFID temperature loggers; I've wanted to try these at some point.
Good luck to you! Are you in AK now? I leave for AK tomorrow...
Loren
alphamach uses ibuttons for much of their tech. If you have the budget, try a hobo. Or, if you are looking at in the nest vs out of the nest, you could run a small experiment to evalaute the difference between ambient temperature and the incubation temperature. Then, monitor the amient air temp in the area with hobos or other temp recorders. Then, insert the info into the model. My suspicion is that incubation temperature. If you are using incubation temperature to infer the time spent on eggs vs foraging, then you will ahve to have something in the nest. Alternatively, for that purpose, you might use small cameras. They may be relatively cheap.
As for ibuttons themselves, if you have a meat-packing company near you, you might be able to obtain them from the packers. These were designed to place in the meat to monitor temperature for public health reasons. So, meat processors may have old ones they toss out. This is purely me throwing out ideas.
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