Tag

research

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

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

By | | No Comments
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.

Read More

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.

Read More

A Black Swift Story: Richard Levad and Zapata Falls

By | Bird-friendly Living, Education | No Comments

The Bird Conservancy of the Rockies’ social media posting on August 31 grabbed my attention. Featuring a close up of a Black Swift in hand, the accompanying post announced that the Black Swift Research Team had recently caught three Black Swifts, all of which had been banded 17 years ago in 2005 as adults, breaking the longevity record of oldest known for the species. My heart nearly stopped.

Read More

Black Swift Movement Ecology Webinar

By | | No Comments

The Black Swift is an aerial insectivore that has evolved an almost exclusive lifestyle on the wing. This species is of continental concern, but little is known about its movement ecology. We recently discovered a new behavior, an amazing adaptation to moon light and gained insight into their foraging patterns during the breeding season.

Tune into this webinar to learn what the Black Swift research team has learned from the Black Swift Movement Ecology project. This webinar is presented by Rob Sparks the Black Swift Research team lead at Bird Conservancy of the Rockies.

The program fee is $3 to attend this webinar.

In order to provide equitable access to all, complimentary tickets are available at no cost to the participant thanks to support from generous donors.

Follow this LINK to register!

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing the ZOOM link to be used the day of the webinar.

The Bird Migration Explorer: Bringing Bird Migration to Life Through Science, Big Data, and Information Technology

By | Education, Science | No Comments

The Bird Migration Explorer reveals migration data consolidated for 458 bird species found in the United States and Canada. It allows users to see the most complete data collected on migratory species in their neighborhoods and where those birds go throughout the year. Read on to find out how Bird Conservancy was involved in the creation of this platform.

Read More