An attempt in making a Bird Tracing Device

An attempt in making a Bird Tracing Device

A Device to track birds and their paths in sky

7/25/2025

Electronics
An attempt in making a Bird Tracing Device

Background

This idea has been sitting in my head for a long time. Every time August 15th approaches, it comes back to me.

15th Aug is Indian Independence day. As a celebration of freedom kites are flown in Northern India.

As history teaches us, any dumb celebration is bound to become competitive and violent, that’s exactly what has happened here.

Over a period of time, instead of staying as a simple act of celebration and pride, instead of using simple cotton threads people started using glass coated threads - Manjha.

In the last 10 years popularity of Nylon fishing line is also booming.

All this, just to keep one’s kite flying the highest, to cut down others, and to feed an ego by asserting dominance over skies that were never ours to begin with.

I too am a victim of this mentality and it has costed us deaths of lakhs of birds and few human lives too.

There are no proper numbers here to understand how many birds are killed per hour in a city in the 15th Aug week. All numbers are estimations from the count of birds taken to clinics or user reported incidents. Countless of incidents are never reported.

Device

I thought can I make a bird tracking device, deploy it in a roof and see how many birds are detecting in an area per hour and what the chance of collision( direct or indirect ) with kite strings. From this a number can be estimated and we can understand better scale of this problem and deal with it appropriately.

It’s not simple as kites and their trajectory too needs to be tracked. Apart from mid air collisions there are other variables like thread entanglement in trees. Need to understand how all this can be modeled.

So I got started. Got an IMX219 Cam and a Raspberry pi Zero W. Built an enclosure from scratch that can stay sturdy, provide airflow inside and also be rain proof so that electronics are safe. Procured an Acrylic Dome for top housing for clear view of skies.

Basically I now have a high quality CCTV with pan and tilt. I am working on power supply now, will then deploy in site and work on algorithm.
An attempt in making a Bird Tracing Device

An attempt in making a Bird Tracing Device

A Device to track birds and their paths in sky

7/25/2025

Electronics
An attempt in making a Bird Tracing Device

Background

This idea has been sitting in my head for a long time. Every time August 15th approaches, it comes back to me.

15th Aug is Indian Independence day. As a celebration of freedom kites are flown in Northern India.

As history teaches us, any dumb celebration is bound to become competitive and violent, that’s exactly what has happened here.

Over a period of time, instead of staying as a simple act of celebration and pride, instead of using simple cotton threads people started using glass coated threads - Manjha.

In the last 10 years popularity of Nylon fishing line is also booming.

All this, just to keep one’s kite flying the highest, to cut down others, and to feed an ego by asserting dominance over skies that were never ours to begin with.

I too am a victim of this mentality and it has costed us deaths of lakhs of birds and few human lives too.

There are no proper numbers here to understand how many birds are killed per hour in a city in the 15th Aug week. All numbers are estimations from the count of birds taken to clinics or user reported incidents. Countless of incidents are never reported.

Device

I thought can I make a bird tracking device, deploy it in a roof and see how many birds are detecting in an area per hour and what the chance of collision( direct or indirect ) with kite strings. From this a number can be estimated and we can understand better scale of this problem and deal with it appropriately.

It’s not simple as kites and their trajectory too needs to be tracked. Apart from mid air collisions there are other variables like thread entanglement in trees. Need to understand how all this can be modeled.

So I got started. Got an IMX219 Cam and a Raspberry pi Zero W. Built an enclosure from scratch that can stay sturdy, provide airflow inside and also be rain proof so that electronics are safe. Procured an Acrylic Dome for top housing for clear view of skies.

Basically I now have a high quality CCTV with pan and tilt. I am working on power supply now, will then deploy in site and work on algorithm.