Our banding trainee position strives to provide technical bird banding experience to foster future ornithologists. While learning these skills the trainee also becomes part of the community at the banding station. Lauren is our second banding trainee at the Barr Lake banding station. Read on to hear more about her time at the station.
Should trees be planted everywhere? In this blog our Program Manager for the Northern Great Plains, Angela, discusses the past, present and future of trees planted in a grassland ecosystem. When the right trees are planted in the right places, everything is great!
As I look back on my seasons as a Camp Director and counselor before that, the moments I think of most often are the moments in between the big things. They’re the glue that holds it all together and cements the impact had by camp on my life. This summer at Bird Camp is no different. I’ve included a few of our favorite stories of awe, wonder, and dirt that wove together the whole of what we did this season.
Throughout the years one school and teacher has created a legacy of coming out to our programs twice a year. Chuck Hart at Zion Lutheran in Brighton, CO has been attending our program with his students for over 20 years. Read on for a conversation with Chuck.
If you had to name one pollinator other than a honeybee, what would be your first guess? More bees? Well, you wouldn’t be wrong, nearly every species of bee pollinates flowers and food crops. But what about beetles? Certain birds? The winged night terrors we call bats? While there are no denying honeybees are crucial to our environment and provide us with an excellent service, the fact is, they are not native to North America.
The Red Crossbill, Loxia curvistra, is a peculiar finch found among the spruces, firs, pines, and hemlocks of coniferous woodlands. The Red Crossbill is one of three of the 17 finch species in North America that have an unusual, but spectacular beak. Per their name, the crossbill has a crossed bill. You may be thinking, what does having a crossed bill have to do with the journey of a crossbill? Everything.
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.
There are always eyes reflecting back in the beam of my headlamp. Usually, it is deer or elk, their silhouettes looking vaguely alien because of their large ears. Other times, it is a Common Poorwill that sits on the trail, eyes reflecting red, and flutters up in a panic when I walk too close. A handful of times it has been a bear, that crashes away through the undergrowth once it catches a whiff of this unwashed field tech and vanishes astonishingly quickly for an animal so large…
You know the old phrase: Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over. Over the two years that I’ve now been in the San Luis Valley (SLV) of Colorado, I’ve heard a lot of stories that recall that phrase. Stories of family members who no longer speak due to disagreements irrigation strategies, landowners who’ve been shot by trespassers hoping to steal water under cover of night, ranchers on their fifth year of a water court case due to a neighbor dispute. This story, however, is not one of those.
I stop what I’m doing for a moment and look up to watch a pair of circling Red-tailed Hawks. They’re smugly indifferent to my work, but their presence makes it go a little faster all the same. With the Western Meadowlarks, Lark Buntings, and Cassin’s Sparrows as a soundtrack, it’s a simply beautiful day to be outside.
