This is Bird Note. In the animal world, large charismatic species tend to get the

most attention. But for the Cory Buster, the largest flying bird in Africa, that

attention hasn't translated to a ton of scientific research. They're still

common in parks and reserves, but their populations are dropping outside of

protected areas. They're not that well studied. We don't know a whole lot about

fair habitat preferences. That's Catherine Mertus, a research ecologist at

the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. She tracks animals for a living

and a few years ago she was focused on Cory Busterts. It is a tale of mostly

unrequited love. We had these solar powered tracking devices. They're held

on to the bird using harness, like a backpack harness, made of essentially

teflon coated ribbon. But to put them on the birds, they had to catch them. And

for a big bird, you're gonna need a bigger net. You string this three-meter tall,

30-meter long, that on poles or mostly natural vegetation. Trying to gently

herd a Busterd into the huge nets turned out to be quite a task. In an entire

field season, they only caught three birds out of 40 or 50 attempts. We had

one that walks basically right up to the net and they just pumped his legs and

took that straight up into the air. But they fitted the three birds they did catch

with their little tracking backpacks, which provided years of data that can help

with future conservation planning. For Bird Note, I'm Kevin McLean.