When business is passion, this seems inevitable - sometimes you do not know whether to laugh or cry. We have been facing this state surprisingly often recently. Imagine this - a logger fitted 6 years ago, stopped sending data in 2022 and after 2 years starts sending again. But it turns out te bird had been dead for some time, and something simply flipped the carcass allowing the sunlight to charge the battery and activate the device.
It is nothing new to us - we have had cases of loggers being silent for a year after the bird had died. Lying on the ground, our devices have succesfully managed it through winter, including snow cover, to start transmitting again. This one is now bit by bit sending the stored locations, which might give the answer to the death cause once all data has been sent.
And what now? Be proud of the quality of your own product? Or be sorry for yet another unnatural, as usual, loss of the bird and the lost opportunity of further data collection and possible hardware longevity record breaking?
In this case the news concern Sarygul - born in Kazakhstan Steppe Eagle Aquila nipalensis which got his logger in July of 2018. Which I had the privilige of taking part of.
The fate of the other birds can be followed here.