Bastiaan Blaauw

Designer of the site

I am a designer, online application developer and bird lover, living in Fryslân, the Netherlands.  In 2015 Theunis Piersma asked me to build a web application to display locations of blacktailed godwits that carry a satellite transmitter on a map. The first version of this application was released on the website of citizen's initiative King of the Meadows (https://volg.keningfanegreide.nl/).  In the following year's we further developed the techniques to show the endeavours of migratory birds of the East Atlantic Flyway.

One of the mail goals of the tracking site is outreach.  And raise awareness by a broad audience and to provide context around the migration trough a blog and by the integration of Google Streetview. In 2016 we started a project called waarisamalia.nu to invigorate this goal. With the aid of tracking data and the map the goal was to predict the precise time arrival of blacktailed godwit 'Amalia' in Friesland. The one who with the best prediction won a trip to the place where Amalia was at the time of prediction.

Since early 2020 globalflywaynetwork.org is released. I hope to be able to contribute to further development of the site and this unique network of scientist, researchers and other collaborators.