Data from the tagged birds is allowing sophisticated computer language programmes to write the story of their lives through daily and weekly blogs of how and why they explore the landscape around them.
The Blogging Birds project, launched today, is part of a collaboration between computer and environmental scientists at the University of Aberdeen and conservationists at the RSPB.
Several kites have been fitted with satellite tags that relay the kites’ position up to six times a day and this information is then enriched with information on weather, habitat and landscape to build a picture of the birds’ movements and home ranges.
Pioneering programming called “Natural Language Generation” then allows computers to generate written language from this information, in the form of a blog post about the red kite without human help.
“Using cutting edge computing technology, red kites will tell you a story about their day-to...