As anyone who has ever worked a satellite - or does so regularly - working these birds, as they are known, has its rewards. A group of researchers in Australia has also been working the birds, a species known as a white-backed swallow, using temperature-sensing radio transmitters. They’ve received some great results, as we hear from John Williams VK4JJW.

JOHN: No matter which hemisphere you live in, no doubt this year has already shaped up to be a time of weather extremes. Wherever you are, you have a lot in common with the white-backed swallow, a prevalent species here in Australia with the very uncommon ability to survive despite freezing temperatures to blasting heat. We’re talking about as much as 50 degrees Celsius - that’s 122 degrees Fahrenheit - and we Australians especially can relate!

To learn how the birds survive, researchers in central Australia’s Sturt National Park outfitted some of them with tiny transmitters. This was not an avian Parks on the Air; this was a research project to monitor the birds’ physiological responses through biologging - a way to record and transmit their body temperatures’ changes as the birds slept in their burrows at night.

The result? A highly successful Worked All States of Bird Physiology. The collected data confirmed the scientists’ theory that a deep torpor - an essential near-shutdown of metabolism, heart rate and breathing - was essential for these birds, just as for some other bird species, such as the tiny hummingbirds in some regions of the world.

The results were recently published in the journal Current Biology. The scientists called the transmitters key to their findings because data could be gathered in the wild instead of an artificial setting, such as a laboratory. Hams, of course, would not be surprised at radio’s reliability. After all, the researchers HAD created a Reverse Beak Network.