I was planning to attach a Pod 3 GPS tracker to the back of my next macaw's harness. It weighs 31 grams. If something lighter and better comes out, great, but if not, this one seems pretty good. It's actually meant for pets, so it has that full degree of accessibility and ease of use behind it. If you've ever looked up wildlife GPS trackers (the kind of devices that only weigh a couple grams), you've seen that they're prohibitively expensive and a lot more complicated for the average user.
The problem is, of course, training a bird not to chew on something like the Pod 3. However, I have resolved that I will train my next bird to wear the harness and the GPS tracker comfortably and with minimal chewing. (I lost my Hahn's macaw this weekend...still hoping to find him.) I understand that you should never rely on something like GPS; your bird should just be trained. But much of that training takes places outdoors, and if something should go wrong, at least there is more chance of recovery with a tracker on them. The bird could be less than a mile from you and you might never know. With the GPS, you could know, get them back, and train to correct the problem for next time. I would rather my bird wear a harness which could admittedly get caught on something, and a GPS tracker which they might break, than no tracker at all. (I would also rather train for free flight than not.)
I don't see why free flight birds should be any different than dogs and cats with regards to GPS tracking. Maybe it's "less impressive" to have the harness and tracker on, but if it means I can find the bird in the event of a mishap, that is more than fine by me. I just have to reiterate, I'm not saying you should train less because you think you're safe with the GPS. I don't believe that using a GPS tracker is "relying" on a GPS tracker, either. It's just some kind of safety measure rather than nothing. You can train and train and train, but until you go outside, you never know what will happen. If my Hahn's macaw were bigger and wearing a tracker, it is very likely I would have him right now, or at least know what tree he's in. People can make mistakes while training, too. It seems unnecessarily harsh to say "Well, if you make a mistake, your bird is gone forever". Why not have something to fall back on to give the person a chance to correct their mistake?
So yeah. Some people would probably say it's more trouble than it's worth, but I don't think so. I just think the technology for a tracker light enough for birds hasn't been practical for the average person until just recently, and even then, you need to have a big macaw to make something like the Pod 3 work. I think that's really why we don't see birds wearing them. It's hard to train them to leave it alone, if they didn't learn to fly with the harness, that could handicap them until they learn how to deal with it, etc. Combine that with a small population of people doing free flight and no established precedent for putting trackers on the birds and it makes sense why you don't see it being done. It's not impossible, it just isn't common yet. It's accepted that big, loud, colourful macaws are the best to free-fly because they're easiest to recover. Even easier to recover is a big, loud, colourful macaw wearing a GPS tracker.
Just my two cents... I had been looking into GPS for pet birds long before I started training my Hahn's, and I would have definitely had him wear a tracker if he were big enough. He wasn't, so I didn't, but I'll make sure my next bird wears one.
I have only trained Trudi to wear a harness during flight.
