University of Montana Bird Ecology Lab

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*

Institute for Bird Populations Five Valleys Land Trust MPG Ranch

What’s the buzz on our Grassland Bird Project?..….other than the Grasshopper Sparrows singing of course *Ba-dum-tss! 🥁.

We have been hard at work target netting and deploying tracking tags on another 50 grassland sparrows. This is the second consecutive year we have put out tags on adult Grasshopper Sparrows and adult Vesper Sparrows. These tiny, battery powered tags (Lotek ) will add to our understanding of migratory routes and timing of grassland species nesting on MPG Ranch (MPG Ranch ). Additionally, this year we are collecting feather samples from these birds for the Bird Genoscape Project (BGP) project to help us better understand migratory connectivity in this assemblage.

🌾 🐦 🌾 🗺️
Grassland species are among the most imperiled groups of birds in North America, and understanding their migratory routes and habitat needs throughout their full annual cycle is imperative for conservation. Stay tuned for updates (and fun maps) when our birds start to move!

*All birds handled by trained professionals under appropriate permits*

Photo 1: an adult Grasshopper Sparrow fitted with a tracking tag and ready for release.
Photo 2: an adult Vesper Sparrow with a tracking tag.
Photo 3: Vesper Sparrow showing where the tiny tracking tag sits on the back.
Photo 4: Vesper Sparrow release!

We really enjoyed all your responses 😆 but here is what that neckwear is actually about AND what it has to do with birds! 🐦🐄 🐮 🌾

In southwest Montana you may see cattle wearing a new accessory. Ranchers are implementing virtual fencing–an innovative technology that uses GPS-equipped collars to manage cattle and reduce the need for physical fences. Virtual fencing is controlled from a smartphone app 📱, giving ranchers and land managers unprecedented flexibility and precision in where and when cattle are grazed. 

UMBEL is collaborating with The Nature Conservancy (The Nature Conservancy in MT ) and the Southwest Montana Sagebrush Partnership to learn how bird communities respond to these changes in grazing management. Many songbirds that occur across the diverse rangelands of North America are declining, including species that depend on sagebrush, grassland, and riparian ecosystems. Rangeland management practices can affect breeding songbirds by altering the availability of preferred nesting substrates, refugia from predators, and foraging success. By pairing bird surveys with data from collared cattle, we can identify grazing practices that optimize avian conservation. 🐄 🐦 🐮 🌾

During bird surveys this summer, UMBEL biologists encountered Sage Thrashers, Greater Sage-Grouse, Ferruginous Hawks, and an impressive variety of sparrows—including Brewer’s, Vesper, Song, Grasshopper, White-crowned, and Savannah Sparrows. 

Learn more about virtual fencing and The Nature Conservancy partnerships with ranches in southwest Montana in this video (link also in bio): https://nature.ly/4uXMFKp

Learn more about the Southwest Montana Sagebrush Partnership (link also in bio): https://nature.ly/4uXMte9

Media by: Tricia Rodriguez
Slide 1: collared cattle on the open range
Slide 2: hatch day at a Brewer's Sparrow nest
Slide 3: a typical survey scene in Montana, can you spot the surveyor?
Slide 4: Vesper Sparrow with food for the nest!
Slide 5: Vesper Sparrow nest!
Slide 6: a surveyor crossing "not-so-flexible" fencing
Slide 7: Elephant's Head Lousewort blooming on the open plain 💜

For please join us in showing some love and appreciation to our amazing field crew! Each year, UMBEL seeks out the best of the best to tackle the immense amount of field work we’ve lined up. This year, our three seasonals have mainly spread their time between MAPS (Institute for Bird Populations) banding with our Bird’s-Eye View Education Program and Tree Swallow nest box monitoring/sampling for our ecotoxicology work.

From us and the birds, thank you guys for all your hard work and dedication! ❤️ 🐦 ❤️

Slide 1: Grace!
Favorite bird: American Dipper!
This is Grace’s 4th season with UMBEL! Grace is grateful to have lived and worked in Montana for ~10 years, first working in conservation through trail work, Aquatic Invasive Species management, and environmental education around beaver habitat before finding her way into the bird world! She brings with her a wealth of experience and has travelled throughout the west to work on field ornithology projects, acquiring a whole range of field skills like: nest searching, point counting, migration banding, and motus tagging. Most recently, she was working on a wintering grassland bird motus tagging project in the SW with Bird Conservancy of Rockies

Slide 2: Laura!
Favorite bird: White-tailed Tropicbird!
Originally from the Netherlands 🇳🇱, Laura grew up in Kansas and started doing wildlife field work and banding birds there during her undergrad. Laura then spent the last 1.5 years island hopping in Hawai‘i 🏝️🐦 🏝️ working on three different bird research projects including Hawaiian honeycreepers (hawaii_vine_project), ducks, and avian frugivore plant interactions.

Slide 3: Kara!
Favorite bird: her beloved Saltmarsh Sparrows!
Kara graduated with a degree in wildlife and conservation biology from the University of New Hampshire where she fell in love with birds after taking an ornithology class! She previously worked two migration bird banding seasons in the eastern US, as well as three seasons with SHARP but this is her first MAPS season and first time exploring out west! 🌲🥾 🏔️ 🌲

Let's have a Chat 😉

Yellow-breasted Chats have been increasing in the last few years at our MPG Ranch MAPS banding station. Likely, in part, due to the surrounding thickets of Snowberry reaching an attractive height for nesting 🪹. Chats like a dense understory, with nice open canopies. YBCH have long been considered taxonomic oddities, they were previously lumped in with the new world warblers until DNA analysis supported elevating them to their own family in 2017, Icteriidae.

We caught this stunning After Second Year male earlier this month and found he was already banded! Looking back at the data, we can see that he was first captured and banded June 2025 in a neighboring net, then determined to be in his Second Year of life. So now this bird is in its third year (something we wouldn't be able to tell without previous capture data) and returning to its same territory for the second time to breed 😁

Most songbirds share this high "site fidelity", returning to the same breeding territories year after year to raise their nests. Hope to see ya next year little guy 🫡

Our Tree Swallows are hard at work raising their wriggling masses of babies! Across our nest box network, almost all nests now have nestlings, which means swallows are especially busy feeding babies and our field crew is especially busy monitoring and sampling! Compared to previous years, nesting phenology (timing) seems to be about a week ahead, likely due to our mild winter and early spring here in western MT.

Both adults attend the nestlings and frequently bring in wads of flying adult aquatic insects (mayflies, caddisflies, etc.)... they are essentially a feathered trout! 🐟 🪶 🐦

Video 1: female Tree Swallow watching the world go by from her nest hole
Video 2: food delivery 🚚!
Video 3: exiting to look for more food
Video 4: a pair checking that the coast is clear before delivering the food 🦟
Video 5: male Tree Swallow with food for the best
Photo 6: handsome male Tree Swallow

🗺️🪶 Last week, our BEVEP crew put in some special target netting effort to sample Bobolink in partnership with the Bird Genoscape Project (BGP). The bird genoscape project uses DNA from feather samples taken during the breeding season to map the extent of genetic variation across a species' breeding range. Feather samples can then be taken anywhere along the migratory or winter range and birds ascribed back to their breeding population! A genoscape is currently being developed for Bobolink🪶 🗺️

We used a 3D printed decoy and audio lure to quickly capture, sample, and release 6 male Bobolinks on their breeding grounds in western MT. There are many fun facts we could share about this Iconic Icteriid, but one of our favorites is that Bobolink are one of only a few NA species which do two complete molts a year. These male BOBO's underwent a complete molt in the fall, switching into a streaky brown plumage like the females and then sometime over the winter they replaced all their feathers again to this stunning black and buff alternate plumage! This is thought to be an adaptation for birds whose habitat preferences subject them to alot of wear and tear (e.g. high UV and abrasive vegetation). It's fun to imagine that the wear we are viewing on their feathers here on breeding grounds is a result of pushing through thick grass in the pampas and/or pantanal of South America, under the harsh tropical sun. 🌾🐦🪶🗺️

*All birds handled by trained professionals with appropriate permits*

Have you been wanting to visit one of our banding stations but can't make it during the work week? Well what are you doing the last Saturday in June?

Here's your opportunity to come see wild birds up close, learn about healthy riparian ecosystems and the impact of mining history on the Upper Clark Fork Basin, and hear about what an ornithologist is and what we can learn from birds in the hand! 🐦

🧭We'll be at the Milltown State Park Main Pavilion (7501 Juniper Dr.)
⏰ from 7-11am
📆 on Saturday, June 27th

Adults and children of all ages and backgrounds are welcome! All banding days are weather dependent. Contact Sasha Robinson [email protected] for more info/questions.

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