Bugging The BirdsBugging The Birds

Half the fun for amateur birders is crouching in the bushes, field glasses and guide at the ready. But scientists are more focused on results than adventure. In fact, they'd like to do their surveillance from their labs. Enter Intel and University of California, Berkeley researchers, who've developed small remote sensors that detect the presence of nearby wildlife while monitoring habitat conditions such as temperature, humidity, and light levels.

They're testing the battery-powered devices on Maine's Great Duck Island to follow days in the lives of storm petrels--small, elusive seabirds. The sensors are hidden in nests.

Let's hope the petrels fare better than geese tracked using wireless collars during a different experiment. One unfortunate fowl was tracked from England to the Canadian Arctic, where it suddenly fell still. Researchers following the radio signal later found it in a hunter's freezer.