Either a bird went on vacation or scientists need a tourist to return their equipment

Photo by: Arterra/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

The hunt is on for a bird tracking device that won't log the bird's movements, but will likely track the travel of a tourist. Researchers want the public's help to get the tracker back so they can study birds again.

An oystercatcher, a black and white bird with a long, red-orange beak, first brought the tracker to Orkney, an archipelago of islands north of Scotland.

The tracker was lost at the beach on Sanday on April 7th. The device began tracking a bird's movements in late May.

The PhD student in charge of the project that deployed the tracker said in a video that it had gone on a tour. After spending the night at a campsite, it went to a pizza shop the next day. The tracker was able to catch a flight from Edinburgh to London. Researchers think the tracker has found a home in west London.

TheGPS device, which looks like a flash drive with a solar panel attached, sends out signals about its location every couple of hours. Researchers were able to map out the journey a tourist from Orkney would take back to London.

Twitter can you please help? We have a tag that has fallen off one of @mindtheTrapp's oystercatchers. Someone visiting Orkney in the last few days seems to have found it and taken it to London. Can you please RT and/or get in touch if you think you can help us get it back! pic.twitter.com/a2IoXzI02h

— Stuart Bearhop (@StuBearhop) June 9, 2022

Someone who has just returned from a holiday in the Orkneys may have picked up the tag and forgotten about it. They don't realize that we have been able to follow where they've been almost their entire holiday and almost down to the exact house that we think it must be in

They hope the person will realize what they have picked up and return it to them. There is a reward for its return. It is reported that the tracker costs about $1,000. The College of Life and Environmental Studies at the University of Exeter can be reached if the tracker is lost or stolen. If she had found a similar device at the beach, she would have done it as well.

The birds that were placed on the tracker were those that wade through shallow waters in north Dublin. When high tides occur, the birds move further inland to public parks. Most of the birds' typical coastal habitat around Dublin Bay is protected as a UNESCO-recognized Biosphere, but not all of it. According to ITV, Trapp is working with the County Dublin to figure out which urban areas are most important to the birds.