1.In the summer of 2019, Dominique Potvin, an animal ecologist at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia, was excited to begin a tracking study on Australian magpies.
2019年夏天，澳大利亚阳光海岸大学的动物生态学家多米尼克·波特文兴奋地开始了一项对澳大利亚喜鹊的跟踪研究。
2.She and her team had an exciting new technology to test out and plenty of questions about the birds’ movements and social dynamics.
她和她的团队有一项令人兴奋的新技术要测试，还有大量关于鸟类运动和社交动态的问题。
3.But the magpies had other ideas.
但是喜鹊们却有不同的想法。
4.Within minutes of being fitted with tiny, backpack-like tracking devices, the birds began showing evidence of cooperative “rescue” behavior to help one another remove the trackers.
在被安装上小型的、类似背包的追踪装置后的几分钟内，这些鸟就开始表现出合作的“救援”行为，帮助彼此移除追踪器。
5.Potvin and her colleagues describe how they watched their planned experiment implode in real time in a new paper — and what the experience taught them about bird behavior and designing studies of wild animals.
波特文和她的同事们在一篇新论文中描述了他们是如何实时观察到他们计划中的实验失败的——以及他们在鸟类行为和设计野生动物研究方面的经验。
6.In recent years, scientists have used Global Positioning Systems (GPS) devices to precisely track the movements of a number of animal species.
近年来，科学家们已经使用全球定位系统设备来精确跟踪一些动物物种的运动。
7.However, the size of the technology has limited the types of species studied.
然而，技术设备的大小限制了可研究的物种种类。
8.For instance, songbirds are typically too small to carry GPS devices.
例如，鸣鸟通常体型太小，无法携带GPS设备。
9.That’s one reason Potvin chose Australian magpies for her study.
这也是波特文选择澳大利亚喜鹊做研究的原因之一。
10.Despite their name, Australian magpies are songbirds, not corvids.
尽管名字叫喜鹊，但它们是鸣禽，而不是鸦科。
11.Potvin says they are actually more closely related to robins than they are to crows.
波特文说，它们实际上与知更鸟的关系比与乌鸦的关系更密切。
12.Advances in technology have led to ever-smaller GPS tracking units.
如今技术的进步已经催生出了更小的GPS追踪装置。
13.The ones Potvin used weighed less than one gram, no big deal for a 300-gram magpie.
波特文用的这种就不到一克，对于一只300克的喜鹊来说没什么大不了的。
14.But small trackers come with their own challenges, including limited battery life and storage capacity.
但小的装置也有自己的局限性，包括电池寿命和存储容量有限。
15.To address these issues, Potvin and her team trained a group of local, wild magpies to come to an outdoor feeding station.
为了解决这些问题，波特文和她的团队训练了一群当地的野生喜鹊，让它们来到一个户外喂食站。
16.At this station, the battery of the tracker could be wirelessly recharged and its data downloaded.
在这个监测站里，跟踪器的电池可以无线充电并下载数据。
17.The other novel aspect of the tracking device was the design of its harness.
跟踪装置的另一个新颖之处是其背带的设计。
18.The backpack-like harness was engineered with a single weak point that could be unlocked with a magnet.
这种背包式的背带设计有一个弱点，就是可以用磁铁解锁。
19.The idea was that when a bird returned to the feeding station, it would encounter a magnet that would release the harness and tracker, allowing for easy retrieval without the need for recapture.
他们的想法是，当一只鸟回到喂食站时，它会遇到一块磁铁，磁铁会释放安全带和追踪器，这样就可以很容易地取回，而不需要再把鸟抓回来。
20.Over many months, Potvin and her colleagues trained a group of magpies to visit the feeding station and planned their experiment.
几个月后，波特文和她的同事已经训练了一群喜鹊，让它们参观喂食站，并计划进行实验。
21.Finally, the morning arrived: They trapped five of the birds and fitted them with the GPS trackers.
后来，趁天亮时:他们抓住了五只鸟，给它们装上了GPS追踪器。
22.The researchers thought that all they had to do next was wait, watch, and entice the birds back to the station to gather all the data.
研究人员认为，他们接下来要做的就是等待、观察并引诱这些鸟回到空间站收集所有数据。
下集明天更新，敬请期待
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