Female eagle racks up hundreds of pounds in roaming charges
The eagle that racked up roaming charges: Bird being monitored by scientists cost them a fortune in messages after it flew through Kazakhstan and Iran
- One steppe eagle named Min flew first to Kazakhstan and then went to Iran
- The roaming charges were ‘astronomical’ and scientists had bill of hundreds
- Russian scientists were monitoring 13 birds in their routes from Siberia
A female eagle racked up hundreds of pounds in roaming charges after being fitted with a device to track her migration path.
Russian scientists were monitoring 13 birds in their routes from Siberia.
One steppe eagle named Min flew first to Kazakhstan, to an area without mobile coverage.
Steppe eagle Min with her brother Sin. Russian scientists were monitoring 13 birds in their routes from Siberia
Novosibirsk ornithologist Elena Schneider is pictured with one of the birds taking part in the study
She stayed there almost four months and then flew by a circuitous route to land in Iran – and all the previous messages unloaded at once.
But the roaming charges were ‘astronomical’ – and the scientists were landed with a bill running into ‘hundreds of pounds’.
Had the GPS location messages been sent from Kazakhstan, the charges would have been tiny in comparison.
A map of the routes taken by the birds was tracked over the time of the study. Min’s journey is in red
In Iran each text message cost around 60p.
Novosibirsk ornithologist Elena Schneider said: ‘She sent us all at once hundreds of expensive SMSs with her summer locations … spending the entire collective phone budget for our eagles.’
Now scientists from the Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre of Novosibirsk have started a campaign called ‘Top up the eagle’s mobile’ to fund Min’s expensive foreign travel.
‘We cannot let the eagles stop broadcasting – this is a very important study with interesting results,’ said the scientist’s statement.
On an earlier flight south from Russia, Min had ventured as far south as India.
Other eagles had far more modest roaming charges.
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