Tag

research

Monitoring a Cryptic Species, the Black Swift

By | Monitoring Programs, Science | No Comments

As I stumble out of my tent at 4 a.m. my eyes squint to a blanket of stars in the dark sky above me. My red headlamp light illuminates my tent as I gather my gear, and get ready for my ascent to Columbine falls in Rocky Mountain National Park, a mere 2.6 miles and 1,475 ft gain in elevation to the falls along the Longs Peak trail. This trail is popular among hikers that attempt to summit Longs Peak.

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Working to Understand Avian Communities

By | Partners, Science | No Comments

My journey toward a love for birds began in Central America during my Peace Corps years in Guatemala. Working as a volunteer, I was tasked with cataloging all bird species in a newly designated wildlife refuge and sprawling freshwater lowland jungle called Bocas Del Polochic. Working with local rangers hired to protect the refuge, we roamed the area via dugout canoe documenting the vast assemblage of different bird species.

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Reflections from the 2023 IMBCR Field Season

By | IMBCR, Science | No Comments

As the summer slowly progresses towards fall many birds are finished nesting and feeding fledglings and are preparing for the next step in their annual cycle. Some will migrate south as far as Central and South America, while others will hunker down for winter in the same areas where they bred. Each morning the dawn chorus is a little quieter and the species list less diverse. To a technician working on the Integrated Monitoring in Bird Conservation Regions (IMBCR) program this signals that the point counts are done for the year and they too will move on to their next adventure.

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Northern Saw-whet Owl Webinar Featuring Scott Weidensaul and Marion Clément

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A special event to kick off our 2023 Levad Memorial Fund campaign, Bird Conservancy of the Rockies presents a conversation with Marion Clément and Scott Weidensaul.
The Northern Saw-whet Owl is at once one of the most widespread but little-known raptors in North America, found from the northern edge of the boreal forest in Canada and Alaska to the high-elevation oak and pine forests of central Mexico, and migrates through even those regions where it does not breed. For more than 25 years, Scott Weidensaul has been involved in efforts to better understand this pint-sized woodland owl using banding, radio telemetry and even radar. Scott is also the author of over 30 books including Pulitzer Prize finalist Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds and New York Times bestseller A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds.
This event is free, but registration is required.
Thank you to our partners!!
 
Project Owlnet facilitates communication, cooperation and innovation among hundreds of owl-migration researchers in North America and abroad. In the last 28 years, over 375,000 Northern Saw-whet Owls have been banded, largely by Project Owlnet contributors.

Bird Conservancy of the Rockies Northern Saw-whet Owl project has received generous support from Tracy Aviary’s Conservation Fund. Tracy Aviary’s mission is to inspire curiosity and caring for birds and nature through education and conservation.

Unmasking the Long-distance Migration of Flammulated Owls

By | Partners, Science | No Comments

By my students’ calculations, we had spent over 50 hours trying to capture this particular Flammulated Owl, dating back two summers. Make no mistake—there have been many challenging owls to capture over the course of this 40-year demographic study, but this owl had drawn extra attention from the nine students working with me that summer, with its Houdini-esque tactics for evading capture at a nest cavity high in a quaking aspen.

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Rare Bird Alert! A Story of the Yellow Rail Detection in Colorado

By | IMBCR, Monitoring Programs, Uncategorized | No Comments

Being a birder means a lot of different things to many different people. Some birders go out every week to count and list as many species as they can find, while others have a yard list of the birds they identify from their window. Read below for a guest blog from Eric DeFonso, a Bird Conservancy seasonal field crew leader for our Integrated Monitoring in Bird Conservation Regions (IMBCR) program. Eric shows how sometimes, birding by sight is not always feasible or possible.

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