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UM Bird Ecology Lab

@umbirdecologylab

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Avian research lab of @umontana focusing on long-term and ecological effects monitoring, research, education, and outreach. Certified banders.

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We recently participated in Sentinel High School's 'All School Read' tabling event, following their campus wide reading of "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind"! This was a multidisciplinary event that brought together local organizations to present and do activities related to themes of climate consciousness, ingenuity, and community; like those found in their recent read!

🐦 🎡 Our table featured a board game designed by UMBEL's Tricia Rodriguez, in which students played as Montana-breeding neotropical migrant birds and tested their luck as they attempted to complete daunting journeys along their annual cycle! Students learned about the complex lives of our songbirds, the challenges they face and resources they need to be able to survive and reproduce!

How would you like to test your odds? Watch out for that Merlin of DOOM!! 🎡🐦

Click the link in bio to read an article in @missoulian about the event.

#birds #outreach #ornithology #montana #migration by @umbirdecologylab

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Today, the UM birding club got the amazing opportunity to experience a bird banding station in action! We were lucky enough to ruffle some feathers and learn about how birds are researched, and what they can tell us about our environment. The birding club is extremely grateful for @mpg_ranch and @umbirdecologylab for making this incredible experience possible.

Photos: @tobias_dresslar

Please note: All birds are handled by trained professionals with permits. by @umbirdecologylab

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16 days ago

Welcome to the new UMBEL raptor banding station......jk, but that's what it felt like when we captured and banded 3 different juvenile male Sharp-shinned Hawks at our @mpg_ranch fall migration station yesterday 😏

🦅This species of bird eating hawk exhibits quite dramatic sexual size dimorphism, with males being smaller than the females (wing length of around 170mm in ♂️ vs. 202 in ♀️). As for ageing, juveniles are easily distinguished by their vertical brown chest streaks (vs. horizontal rufous barring in adults), yellow eyes (which will turn redder with age), and brown back feathers with rufous edging (these will be replaced with slaty adult feathers). Check out the color variation in yesterday's captures, the last 3 photos are of the same particularly rufous individual! 🦅

Fall Migration has definitely slowed in the last 2 weeks, as expected, but we are hoping for a few more pushes of late season migrants! We still have yet to capture some of the true harbingers of the end of fall migration, such as American Tree and White-throated Sparrow. 🐦

*All birds handled by trained professionals under the appropriate permits*

#birdbanding #raptor #migration #ornithology #montana @umontana by @umbirdecologylab

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16 days ago

For ✨ #FeatureFriday ✨ we want to highlight this year's Bird’s-Eye View Education Program Intern, Kintla Thomas!

Kintla is a born and raised Missoulian who is just starting her 2nd year of undergraduate studies in Biology (with a concentration on ecology and evolution) and Environmental Studies at Colby College in Maine. She is also an avid runner and competes on the Colby Cross Country and Distance Track teams! 🥼👟🎽🐦

Kintla was out with us most MAPS banding mornings this summer, gaining experience with all things bird banding! She also recorded the bulk of our data and, as we sit down to review and enter all of it, we are finding ourselves incredibly grateful for her diligence and IMMACULATE handwriting! From us and the birds- THANK YOU Kintla for all your hard work this summer!!! 🐦 ❤️ 🐦

#birdbanding #ornithology #montana #missoula by @umbirdecologylab

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21 days ago

🦅Last weekend some of the UMBEL crew volunteered to count migrating raptors for the Glacier NP Mt. Brown Hawkwatch! 🦅

It was an excellent two mornings counting at this stunning site, with good numbers of Broad-winged Hawk (including a dark morph adult!), lots of Sharp-shinned and Cooper's Hawks, and eye-level passes of Golden Eagles! It's always a treat when we can help out other research projects in western Montana ❤️ 🌄 ❤️

#hawkwatch #ornithology #birds #montana #glaciernationalpark @glaciernp_citizenscience @glaciernps by @umbirdecologylab

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23 days ago

It's been our busiest week of the fall so far at our migration station on @mpg_ranch! 72, 61, and 67 captures the first 3 days! According to BirdCast, there's still about a week to go of peak migration for Missoula county and then things should really start tapering off 🍃 🍂 🍁

Enjoy this eye candy 👁️ 🍬 👁️ of some recent warbler highlights! Two uncommon species for our nets followed by our most common fall warbler capture. All gorgeous After Hatch Year birds that had finished or were just finishing their big annual molt, ready for the long road ahead to the wintering grounds ❤️

1) Ovenbird
2) Northern Waterthrush
3) Wilson's Warbler ♂️

*All birds handled by trained professionals under appropriate permits*

#montana #birdbanding #ornithology #migration
#nature by @umbirdecologylab

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a month ago

Have you ever been lucky enough to spot a Virginia Rail???

🐦 We had a some great looks at a Virginia Rail this year while monitoring bird response to restoration of O'Dell Creek on Granger 🐦

Marsh birds- such as rails, bitterns, and grebes- spend much of their time hidden in dense wetland vegetation. So, UMBEL has been teaming up with @montanaaudubon to complete targeted surveys using recordings of their calls to improve our chances of detecting these secretive species.

Over 90% of our observations are auditory, so sightings like this are a real treat. What a beauty!! 😍

VIRA photo credit: Bo Crees!

@northwesternenergy
#birds #nature #ornithology #fieldwork #montana by @umbirdecologylab

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a month ago

✨ We had two very exciting visitors to the banding station this week! ✨

Dr. Leslie Rissler, seen here releasing a Swainson’s Thrush, joined us in the field on Monday to learn about our research projects and ongoing fall migration monitoring at @mpg_ranch ! Dr. Rissler is the Dean of the newly formed University of Montana College of Science, which comprises 8 science and mathematics departments. Her impressive research career includes studying ecological niches and phylogeography of herpetofauna, serving in various executive leadership roles at the National Science Foundation, bringing awareness to gender differences in the STEM fields, annnd she has a background in bird ecology 😁 🐦 😁, having conducted her M.S. work studying habitat structure of rare birds of prey: Northern Goshawk and Spotted Owl. UMBEL is proud to host and meet Dr. Rissler who will help oversee work being done at our R1 institution. We are excited about future intersections with this new College of Science!

The other esteemed guest who visited our nets was this (slide 2&3) tiny hatch-year male Sharp-shinned Hawk, still sporting his juvenile plumage and pale eyes. It was a lovely way to start the week! 😊

@umontana
#birdbanding #hawk #montana #ornithology #science by @umbirdecologylab

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a month ago

🍁 Migration is happening! Last week, we started our 16th year of Fall Migration Banding on the @mpg_ranch floodplain! 🍁

🐦 This time of year is always exciting for birds and for us. We get to see a variety of species that may not have bred on the floodplain moving through and using the habitat to molt and fatten up! With so many young-of-the-year on the landscape we also get to see a lot of fresh juvenile plumage, molt limits and "molt limits in progress"!

Here are some recent highlights!

Photo 1: a beautiful Hatch Year Red-eyed Vireo, note that the eye color has yet to turn very red!

Photo 2: Hatch Year Willow Flycatcher, in it's crispy, buffy edged juvenile plumage. Many of our flycatchers don't typically molt until reaching the wintering grounds

Photo 3: Hatch Year Chipping Sparrow undergoing it's Preformative Molt but still with a lot of juvenile body plumage

Photo 4: Hatch Year Western Wood-Pewee, also sporting buffy edged juvenile wing coverts

Photo 5: a subtle A1 molt limit on a Hatch Year Orange-Crowned Warbler which recently finished it's partial Preformative Molt

Photo 6: another Hatch Year Orange-Crowned Warbler in the process of a partial Preformative Molt

#ornithology #birdbanding #montana #molt by @umbirdecologylab

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2 months ago

We recently recaptured two Swainson's Thrushes at @mpg_ranch that we had tagged with Motus transmitters back in 2024!

🌎 Swainson’s Thrushes don’t seem to breed at our MPG banding station, but show up in this riparian habitat in late summer. Taking advantage of the abundance of food and thick cover to fuel for migration and stay safe during their big annual molt. It never ceases to amaze us how these ~30 gram travelers can navigate the hemisphere year after year to complete their life cycle! 🌎

First slide: We’d captured this bird twice before at this station, 9/3/24 when we tagged it and then again 8/13/25 when we determined that the tag was still functioning and left it deployed. Between those two captures, this bird had – at a minimum – flown all the way to Costa Rica and back! Some interesting tidbits from a quick look at the data:

🧭 It took this bird about a month to get from MT to Costa Rica, this epic journey included 500-mile nonstop flights over open water of the gulf.

🧭 The following spring, it was first detected in the US in coastal Texas and made it back to the Bitterroot Valley in 19 days from there.

🧭 All 3 captures of this bird were in two nets that are within 20 meters of each other! Site fidelity (or site faithfulness) is more typically related to breeding and wintering sites, but these birds appear to have high site fidelity for molting grounds 🤔

We checked the Motus data during this capture (8/4/26), determined that the nanotag was no longer functioning and removed it to release the bird unburdened 🫡

Second slide: We first captured this bird around the same time of year way back in 2021 when it was identified as a hatch-year! Upon recapture in 2024, we fitted it with a Motus tag and tracked it all the way down to at least central Colombia during that fall migration! 😲

Motus towers tracked its return to MT via the gulf coast the following summer. We got one more migration track in fall of '25, with the last detection, Oct. 10th, near Veragua Rainforest, Costa Rica.

During this year's encounter, we were able to liberate this now 5-year-old bird of its harness! 🫡

#motus #ornithology #montana #birds #migration by @umbirdecologylab

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2 months ago

Our Bird's-Eye View Education Program just finished our last sessions of summer banding for the MAPS (Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship) season! 🥳 To celebrate, here are some particularly adorable "products" (babies) from at and around our banding stations 🥺

🐦 Thanks to everyone who came out to visit us and learn about birds, healthy riparian ecosystems, and the effects of historic mining on the Clark Fork watershed!!! 🐦

1) Golden-crowned Kinglet
2) Yellow-headed Blackbird
3) Bobolink
4) Northern Rough-winged Swallow
5) Northern House Wren
6) Tree Swallow
7) Orange-crowned Warbler
8) Bank Swallow
9) Mountain Chickadee
10) Barn Swallow
11) Savannah Sparrow
12) Red-winged Blackbird
13) Song Sparrow
14) Cassin's Vireo
15) Osprey nest with chick at our Rock Creek site
16) Wilson's Snipe carefully moved off trail!

*All birds handled by trained professionals under appropriate permits*

@instbirdpop @fivevalleyslandtrust @mpg_ranch
#birds #ornithology #baby #montana #birdbanding by @umbirdecologylab

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2 months ago

Can you ID all the birds in this reel? Drop your observations in the comments 👇

We recently finished up another successful season of field work for a long-term monitoring project that is assessing the effects of restoration on bird communities using point count and callback surveys! 🥳 🐦 🔊

🏞️After two decades of restoration, birds are thriving in the spring fed wetlands on O’Dell Creek, a tributary of the Madison River near Ennis, MT. A diverse collaboration of public and private partners have reconstructed miles of spring creeks, filled drainage ditches, and created nearly 1,000 acres of shallow ponds– bringing the headwaters and their rich mosaic of wetland habitats back to life. 🏞️

📈 Long-term monitoring by UMBEL shows a 900% increase in waterfowl abundance and a 733% increase in species richness! Many protected species that were once rare are now becoming regulars, highlighting the success of restoration efforts for biodiversity conservation.📈

In the coming weeks, we’ll share some more bird highlights from this season's monitoring and discuss the different habitat needs of the birds in the area. ✨ 🐦 ✨

🔗For more info on this project follow the links in bio to @riverdesigngroup and @madisonriverfoundationorg and a video about the restoration!

@montanaaudubon @northwesternenergy

#montana #ornithology #birds #restoration #fieldwork by @umbirdecologylab

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2 months ago