Summary of the annual Motus meeting for Europe and Africa on 4 March 2026 from 09:00 to 16:00 Central European Time in an online format
Hosted by Heiko Schmaljohann (Motus coordination group leader Europe + Africa) & Thiemo Karwinkel with varying participation number between 55-84 people
The recordings of the meeting are available upon request to heiko.schmaljohann@uni-oldenburg.de and it has been send to the participants via E-Mail.
Programme Summary:
Warm Welcome and Introduction by Heiko
Representatives of every country present their current contribution to the motus network.
Northern Finland & Sweden: Niclas Fritzén
- Motus stations in the Northern Baltic Sea region
- tagging focused on bats, mainly Nathusiu’s Pipisstrelle about 5-30 insividuals/year
- would like to built cheaper motus stations by testing cheaper antennas and FunCube alternatives
- false positives are a big issue
Southern Sweden: Magnus Hellström
- represents Ottenby Bird Observatory (run by an NGO) in collaboration with Lund University
- as long as the resources are available, they will continue to operate their stations
- they also have a mobile Motus station
- biggest current and near future tagging projects: yellow-browed warblers & jack snipes
- yellow-browed warblers: interested in departure direction
- jack snipes: very successful: half of the jack snipes go internationally
- it would be optimal to have the motus network extended over the Baltic Sea towards Poland and Eastern Germany
Norway: Reed McKay
- running around 20 stations, mainly on southwestern coast and in Oslo fjord area
- mainly tagging in autumn of Nathusius’s pipistrelle and songbirds together with Uni Oldenburg
Denmark: Morton Elmeros
- 4 stations running + 2 from Uni Oldenburg group, but have no active tagging project at the moment
- tagged 30 Nathusius’s pipistrelle and 4 noctules, but difficult to catch them à detections of 7, and one good track, most bats are disappearing
- they had some starling tracked, but no real tracks, other than local movement detected
- would like to use more mobile stations
Poland: Magdalena Remisiewicz
- no Motus activity at the Moment but huge potential at 3 ringing station at the Baltic Sea coast and also some inland; however, currently no funding at the moment, but eager to collaborate and apply together
- possible research questions include response of songbirds to weather in spring, reverse migration and movement of the aquatic warbler
Germany: Thiemo Karwinkel
- they run a dense network of about 60 stations at German North Sea coast
- research questions cover songbird studies related to: stopover ecology, offshore flights, pre-migratory flights, identification of residents vs. migrants in robins, pesticide contamination and migratory movements, magnetic orientation and navigation
- plan to expand motus to offshore windfarms, 1 station already installed
Netherlands: Sander Lagerveld
- they run a dense network of about 50 stations at Dutch North Sea coast for which funding is saved for the next 5-10 years as stations go to governmental agency
- plan to expand Motus to offshore windfarms
Belgium: Jitse Creemers
- have some stations along the coast and one offshore + an array in the inland for tracking nightjars
- no active tagging, except nightjars
- used solar nanotags on nightjars – however, no detections at all, although many nightjars tagged next to stations
UK: Lucy Mitchell
- very little tagging at the moment
- Scotland had problems with rock pipit detections
- plan for more receiver stations near London, also in South-east
- most tagging has been on Nathusiu’s Pipisstrelle together with Dutch collaborators
Africa: Lucy Mitchell
- Lucy was in Gambia. There are plans to build 2 receivers near Kartong bird observatory
Czech Republic: Vojtech Brlik
- no stations currently
- plans for motus to observe local movements of songbirds, but no funding source
Hungary: Tibor Szep - one motus station in east hungary
- population monitoring of sand martins, which started already 40 years ago, nowadays also with geolocators and Motus tags
- research question with motus: spatiotemporal movements during feeding trips
- used CTT lifetags, CTT blumorpho and Bluebird, and CTT nodes à NOT the 150.1 MHz equipment
- tagging continues in 2026
France: Yann Planque
- have one demonstrator Motus station on an offshore research platform
- potential project of movement of bats between UK and France
Switzerland: Barabara Helm talked to Heiko
- no current development, but Swiss Ornithological Institute keeps interested
Turkey: Ayenur Esra Ocak
- plan to build knowledge capacity with short term scientific mission via EUFLYNET COST action – will visit Heikos group this June
Israel: Daniel Bloche
- 2 stations near Eilat Bird Observatory, run by University of Haifa for the last 2 years
- local stopover study
- tagging will start in March 2026
Ireland: Samantha Ball (in the chat) We have no stations set up in Ireland but have just gotten a small grant to conduct a feasibility study to set up a network here in Ireland. We have lots of interest here from bat conservation organisations and government bodies- so hopefully this is something that we can get started. Particularly here in Ireland, we are interested in the Motus network in relation to how it can inform migration of bats in/out of the island and how this may impact on offshore windfarm developments
Spain: Helena Navalpotro (in the chat) Hello! I am in charge of the 6 stations in the middle of Spain and I just want to say that we are not working with species that migrate and we are using Lotek receivers, so we don’t need to upload the data on Motus to get the IDs. But we want to collaborate and I uploaded all the data I have from the receivers. However, I don’t see any data or detection on the Motus webpage so I don’t know if the upload was correct, as I saw data of a real tag that it was not from my study. If someone is interested, let me know.
Talk Session (see recordings):
Reed April McKay (Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway)
“Bats on the Move – or not? Activity of migratory bat species in southwestern Norway studied with the Motus network and broadscale acoustic monitoring”
Georg Rüppel (Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Germany)
„An R package to model flight paths from radio-telemetry networks – An introduction for users”
Dmitry Kishkinev (Keele University, United Kingdom)
”COST-Action for European Motus capacity building”
Leo Körner (Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Germany)
„Spatial and temporal migration pattern of the Yellow-browed Warbler (Phylloscopus inornatus) in Europe during autumn”
Daniel Bloche (University of Haifa, Israel)
“Migration distance and stopover behaviour of trans-Saharan migrants in the Levant”
Thomas Lameris (University of Groningen, the Netherlands)
“Experimentally increased food availability allows for earlier departure in a long-distance migratory shorebird”
**Discussion round
CTT tags on 2.4 GHz = BlūSeries tags** David La Puma from CTT reports:
- they are very lightweight and use much shorter antennas (~3 cm vs. up to ~22.5 cm), offering ergonomic advantages
- each tag sends two signals: one for Motus station detection and one for crowdsourced location via Blū+; the latter uses crowdsources devices (also Smartphones) to be detected
- the 2.4 GHz frequency allows transmission of additional sensor data (e.g., temperature, battery, pressure, altitude, potentially GPS), BUT only to sensorstatons and not to smartphones
- adding 2.4 GHz receivers to Motus stations enables collection of this sensor data ($425 SensorStation-compatible module and antenna kit includes everything except an ethernet cable) à However, not compatible with Sensorgnome-based stations
- no open-source material and software for BlūSeries detection available
Detection problems: - many users complain about missing detection via motus although tags were deployed in the vicinity of Motus stations** -** Thorsten von Eicken: I’d be happy to try to help anyone having detection issues. Ping me on the motus forum or via direct email tve@voneicken.com - I’ve been maintaining the Sensorgnome software for the past few years.
- With technical problems: Please refer to the motus Forum: If things for the forum are Europe-specific, you can tag “europe” in your post and it will be listed additionally here: https://community.motus.org/tag/europe
**Future meetings **
- there should be a dedicated offshore-motus meeting including Sander, Morten, Norway, UK, Germany, RWE, Yann Planque and others to exchange experience and knowledge
- Organize a Meeting with Lotek and Motus representatives on receiver/detection issues, etc. OR put this in the Motus forum
- Poll: Would you be interested to attend a Motus meeting Europe in Person: → Yes, possible for me: 61% (14 votes) → interested, but no funds: 35% (8 votes) → keep the meeting online: 4% (1 votes)
Minutes by Thiemo