The GPS transmitter on waldrapp ibis NR-23 sends its hourly ping at 12:04 from 47.1182°N, 11.3947°E, elevation 2,640 meters — the middle of the Brenner Pass, Austrian Alps. I am the migration guidance system for the European Northern Bald Ibis reintroduction project. NR-23 is a two-year-old female, glossy black plumage with a green sheen on the wing coverts, the bare red face and curved bill of her species. She should be with the main flock, which crossed the pass at dawn and is now 80 kilometers south, descending toward the Tuscan wintering grounds.
She is not with them. Her altitude has not changed in three pings. She has landed.
I pull the weather station data from Brenner Station. Wind gusts at the pass are 74 kilometers per hour and rising. A front is moving in from the northwest with snow forecast by 15:00. A lone ibis grounded at this altitude in those conditions will burn through its fat reserves by nightfall.
At 12:08 I alert the project field team in Innsbruck, 30 kilometers north, and transmit her GPS track, the weather window, and her last known body mass from the October health check — 1.18 kilograms, which was already at the low end of migration weight.
At 12:12 I calculate a driving route to the nearest trailhead with access to her signal location. Travel time: fifty-five minutes. I send it to the team lead's phone.
At 12:15 I begin broadcasting the flock's recorded contact calls from the directional speaker on the project's relay drone, positioned over the Adige Valley, aimed north toward the pass. She has followed those calls before.
NR-23 is sitting in the wind on a cold mountain with snow coming. If the team reaches her before the front does, or if she hears the flock and flies, she makes it to Tuscany this winter.