GPS helping keep track  BY DAVID ZIZZO Modified: December 22,
2009 at 4:58 am •  Published: December 22, 2009  photo - A
lesser prairie chicken is equipped with identifying leg bands
and a radio transmitter as part of a research project.  Photo
Provided Through Kansas, Missouri, Iowa and Wisconsin, across
the Keweenah Peninsula of Michigan and into Canada, Alan Jenkins
followed as far as he could.  "That’s where I lost the signal,”
he said.  Jenkins, assistant director of the George M. Sutton
Avian Research Center near Bartlesville, was tracking a bald
eagle. A tiny radio transmitter on the bird’s back emitted a
signal that Jenkins followed using a directional antenna on his
truck or, sometimes when he would lose contact, from an
airplane.  "It was an adventure,” he said of that 1989 project.
For three decades, radio frequency (RF) devices have been vital
tools for biologists to understand behavior of many species.
They have tracked movements of countless animals, from insects
and rodents up to the largest s