Our Stewardship and Science teams recently received a $257,000 grant from the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service to support a project designed to conserve the Greater Sage-grouse and other sagebrush-obligate birds.
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Our Wyoming field crew met for midseason training to familiarize themselves with high-elevation plants and birds before they conducted avian surveys in June and July in forests of spruce, fir and Lodgepole Pine and in alpine tundra habitat above tree line. Most of these surveys occur in the western third of the state where technicians also must be aware of Grizzly Bears.
Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory’s Bald Eagle Watch Coordinator Cindi Kelly reports the nest we monitor about a mile from Ted’s Place northwest of Fort Collins, Colo., has survived the High Park fire so far. At one point flames were .9 miles from the nest.
More than 100 guests gathered at the bird banding station at Chatfield State Park on the evening of May 4 for the opening of a new pavilion that will serve as an outdoor classroom where school groups and others can enjoy seeing and hearing about birds, banding and conservation.
RMBO has released Wintering Grassland Bird Densities in Chihuahuan Desert Grassland Priority Conservation Areas, 2007-2011documenting bird abundance, distribution, habitat use and other information collected over five years in three U.S. and six Mexican states.
Six years ago in late August, Rich Levad, Rob Sparks, Jason Beason and Ken Behrens hiked through spruce fir forest to a spot just above timberline where a Black Swift nest clung to a wet, rocky outcrop. The outing was part of Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory’s effort to collect baseline data on this little-known species. When no swifts were seen that evening, the scientists wondered if they had already started migrating – and where did they go?
The last bird that breeds in the U.S. and Canada with an unknown winter destination has finally given up its secret. After years of research – and with some luck – three Colorado researchers have learned that Black Swifts travel more than 4,000 miles to spend the winter in Brazil.
Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory’s International Team is monitoring and banding birds in the Chihuahuan Desert grasslands in northern Mexico with the help of 26 local field techs the team trained in early January.
The new Fall/Winter edition of The All-Bird Bulletin features five stories about RMBO’s work. See pages 12 -16 to read: “New Model Identifies Bird Habitat Use at Multiple Scales,” “‘Boots on the Ground’ Expands Habitat Conservation,” “Taking Outreach from the Land to the Classroom Builds Future Conservation Ethic,” “Critical Chihuahuan Desert Grasslands Rapidly Give Way to the Plow” and “Integrated Monitoring in Bird Conservation Regions (IMBCR)”.
Forty people from as far away as Montana and Texas were in Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory’s Fort Collins office for three days last week to strategize on how to best accomplish seamless bird monitoring across the western landscape.
