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With Gibraltar on the lunaves map (or nearly – we are still looking for a suitable location where the setup is to be placed) it was time to move on, this time to Tarifa, in Spain.

Tarifa is strategically placed to get most of the migration flowing through the Strait of Gibraltar.  A few years back, the local government set up Migres an organisation specialising in the research of bird migration through the Strait of Gibraltar. It is a tier-one organisation when it comes to ornithological research and is responsible for various publications every year. Over the past few months we had been in touch with Alejandro Onrubia, Program Coordinator of the Migres Program.

Migres had already run an extensive moonwatching exercise throughout 2009 and 2010 involving over 120 volunteers from all over Spain. This time round, they were interested in getting a better understanding of how the Migrometer could be of any use.  So there we went to set another unit – the fourth lunaves unit!

The border customs between Gibraltar and Spain. Quite a bit of a queue if one is crossing by car because of the recent tensions between the two countries.

One of two stork flocks seen flying over Tarifa. During the second sighting there was a gale wind and heavy rains – obviously not enough to deter a stork from crossing over from Morocco it seems.

Migres’ current offices….but not for too long!

….and the soon-to-be new Migres offices. An impressive initiative to develop a new state-of-the-art research centre specialising in ornithological research

With Alejandro Onrubia and Beatriz Martin (Scientific coordinator), after braving the storms at Tarifa

Hey, I thought finding birds in a telescope was easy…but I still can’t find the moon! ‘Calibration’ training at one of the test sites.

Testing out the waterproofing under heavy rain….if it survives this it will survive until next September for sure!

Barely any visibility in the mountains around Tarifa

Although we had great results with the trials in Malta, it was always  clear that we had to deploy the setup on a major migratory route to see if it cut the mustard.  Throughout the past few months we had been in correspondence with Dr Keith Bensusan and Mr Charles Perez from GONHS (www.gonhs.org). Luckily for us both Keith and Charles were extremely supportive and cooperative and so here we are in Gibraltar setting up the first unit!

Great support from Dr Keith Bensusan (left) and Mr Charles Perez (right) of GONHS.

The lighthouse at Punta Europa, with a barely visible day moon in the top left corner

Unpacking all the equipment to set it up at the Botanical Gardens

Over the past two days we have surveyed various possible sites where to put the setup. Interestingly enough there are three challenges that are very unique to this place: 

1. The Rock – most of Gibraltar lies in the shadow of the massive limestone promotary on its side (the famous Pillar of Hercules). Direct sunlight does not hit the lower plane before 11.00am, which at night means that the moon will not show up before half of the night is over. One solution for this is to find a spot that lies at the Southern  or Northernmost  part of Gibraltar, thus avoiding the shadow

The southern end of the rock

2. The Cloud – when the wind is blowing from the East, a localized weather system forms such that there is a cloud that forms on the Western part of the promontary, this obscuring the visibility of the sky and hence the moon.

2. The Gulls  – there is a huge colony of gulls across the ridge of the rock and they fly around day and night.  That means that any data that we collect will get skewed with gull sightings unless we find a way around this. Again, the most obvious solution is to find a spot that lies away from the rock where the gulls tend to hang out.

Gulls, gulls everywhere, day and night.

Last night we set a unit out at the Botanical Gardens and finished calibration and training – Charles seems to have got the hang of it very quickly so all is looking very promising.  Over the next few weeks it is likely that we will move the unit to a terrace in a private apartment closer to the airport – it lies outside of the shadow of the rock and further away from the gulls. From a security perspective it will also be quite safe.

Today the weather was not very collaborative and hence any attempts of moonwatching would have been futile – this is the view across Gibraltar Bay of the before the impending storm (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26095937).

Cargo ship in Gibraltar Bay weathering the storm

Today I dismantled one of the webcams that had been damaged through a burnout. Nothing like moon being super bright – it happens when the scope accidentally points towards the sun during the day while waiting for the moon to come up. Not a pretty sight at all but considering the amount of heat it must have been exposed to, it did quite well. It could have burst into flames and do further damage. Despite the melt down the CCD still had some life in it!  

I am still keeping my fingers crossed that the Zurrieq station webcam can be recovered – will know more after visiting this coming Thursday.

We are starting the 2014 with a bang –  we are adding two new units to the lunaves network along a major bird migratory route in Europe!

Double the units…double the nocturnal migration observations, we hope!

The first kit starting arriving today – there are more than thirty components for each unit and that means lots of orders and deliveries. Laptops and motors are still on their way but we hope to have everything in hand by this weekend. It is going to be a busy couple of weeks while we complete assembly. Although the setups will, more or less, be the same as the ones we already have, we shall be doing some minor upgrades and improvements based on the issues encountered so far.  Good weather proofing will be high on the list.

If everything proceeds as planned, by the end of February we will have a total of four units – two units monitoring migration across the Mediterrenean flyway (in Malta) and another two keeping an eye on migration at the selected location. More on this next week as we finalise plans…