Sounds like a great idea! I have not heard of anyone trying it, but the aluminum should have no impact on the tag (since it is encapsulated in glass). Ultimately it may be a question of whether the tag will fall off (if glued), but it does not seem complicated to design a band to hold a PIT tag. What would be really cool is to go one step further and to just make the leg band BE a PIT tag! I don't know enough about the technology to say whether or not it is feasible, but in my mind this is possible (don't they integrate transponders into ski clothing to be used in avalanche rescue?)

Thank you for your response. I actually tried today and unfortunately the aluminium actually did effect the tags and reduced the distance the reader could identify the tags by a lot. I will use plastic rings

That's interesting to know. I found that Cornell has done something similar! https://youtu.be/t0tz2vyteAY it looks like maybe they are taping the PIT tag to the leg band (see 2 min 53 sec).

These people specialize in PIT tag products for fish, but maybe they would have some ideas: http://www.westforkenv.com/pittagging#pit-tag-products

Kevin Shalom, Thank you for your help!

We examined options for attaching PIT tags to aluminum leg bands on Burrowing Owls ....with a PIT tag reader positioned at the entrance to their burrows. However, the aluminum does interfere with the tag, and we abandoned the project. We also found that the costs for placing PIT tag readers at 30+ burrows was quite high. As a result we switched to placing trail cameras near the burrows, to photograph the owls. To date, we have not found any trail cameras that will give night-time photos where the bands are actually readable (you can tell the owl has a band, but cannot read the alpha-numeric band code). However, during the daytime, the trail cameras will give clear photos, and reading the specific band codes is possible.

David, I liked hearing about the use of trail cams. The benefit of the automatic reader, I imagine, is that it will compile the data automatically rather than having to go through photos.

I wonder if something like this would be helpful for your night photos: http://www.anytimesign.com/infrared_animal_id_tagging_system/

Or, you could use a cheap titanium dioxide paint, which reflects IR very well, and write on it or use it in some pattern?

Hi Kevin - yes, the idea was that the owls would go through the antenna 'ring' around the entrance to the tunnels, and they would be clocked in. However, while this will likely work well for female owls (who frequent the burrows more - based on geolocator data), the males may have a tendency to just stand outside the burrow entrance, or on top of a nearby perch ... and thus go uncounted. With the cameras, both will be seen in the images; we just need to allow time for processing the images. We don't need to have the cameras set on motion-sensitive, as we will just get a lot of moving grass and the like; so we will set the cameras to take photos at timed increments. I've taken images at 1-min intervals before, and that works fine. Thank you for your suggestion of the titanium dioxide paint ... will give it a test drive with the bands. Much appreciated.

Hi Motti,

How did you end up attaching the PIT tags to the color bands? I had an amazing engineering student on my project who suggested that the aluminum would reduce the read range of the tags - and he was correct. Moreover, upon recapture, we realized the PIT tag would interfere with efficient reading of USGS number on the band. We ended up aluminium/federally banding each bird, then color-banding, then adding the PIT Tag using a special type of tape. We later added a step of soldering the color bands shut with a veterinary cautery pen, because even slightly open color bands had a higher rate of "dropping" PIT Tags.

In the end we attached the PIT tags to color bamds that we placed on the other leg that the aluminiun bsnd was.

I would advise to use specially made color rings with integrated RFID tags. The reason is that bird legs get damaged quite quickly and the PIT might get stuck behind something.

we have a good supplier and have been using them on great tits for more than 10 years.

before we would glue them to 3 color rings, so that the tag would not stick out. I could provide the name of the supplier if needed

Kees van Oers who is your supplier? I am looking into getting RFID tags for Atlantic puffins - do you know if the ones you use are waterproof?

Thanks!

Kees van Oers I would also be very interested in who your supplier is. Also looking for small passerine tags. Thank you

kees van Oers

I m very interested in who your supplier is. Also looking for small passerine tags.

Thank you