Summer 2020 Songbird Banding Update - Part II | MPG Ranch

Summer 2020 Songbird Banding Update - Part II

September 10, 2020

We have completed our tenth year of monitoring songbirds on the northern floodplain! This summer, we captured 253 birds across 7 days.

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UM Bird Ecology Lab: Songbird Banding 2020 Breeding Season, Part 2 Michael Krzywicki and Megan Fylling

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The University of Montana Bird Ecology Lab banded songbirds on the Northern Floodplain on three days in the second half of the 2020 breeding season: July 13th, July 20th, and July 29th. We captured 113 birds of 23 species across three days of banding

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Unlike mammals that grow fur all over their bodies, birds grow their feathers in distinct tracts, called ptyerlae.

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We captured this juvenile Willow Flycatcher on July 29th

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This second-year American Robin is replacing the flight feathers in its wing for the first time.

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We captured this juvenile male Black-headed Grosbeak on July 20th.

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While it’s often more interesting to report a remarkable increase, decrease, or altogether absence of species we monitor, we find the relative stability of species breeding on the floodplain an important result from banding over the past 10 years

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And the awards for highest number of captures since 2011 go to….

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Total number of captures by species during the 2020 breeding season.

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2020 Turkey Vulture Tracking Update

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2020 Lewis's Woodpecker Research Update