Chickadee News

Last week marked the final nestling banding of the 2024 Boulder Chickadee Study field season wrapping the 6th year of the study. The team of Will, Sara, Olivia, Ajay, Nikki, Blake, and Sage counted 464 eggs, banded 431 nestlings, and 98 new adults. 32 birds previously banded here in Boulder...

Congratulations to Olivia and her co-authors Kathryn, Angela, Harriet Leeson and Carrie Branch for publishing a recent paper in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology. After initially embarking on her undergraduate career as a Violin Performance major, Olivia completed her EBIO degree and honors thesis in our lab last year. For...

The 2024 field season has been a busy one - here are some updates from members of the lab currently in the field: Sara: It has been a wild and exciting field season so far! With the addition of our new nestboxes on flagstaff mountain it is gearing up to...

The good news keeps coming! Nikki (Documenting responses to experimental and natural nest intrusions in two species of cavity-nesting chickadee) and Will (Using acoustic and genomic data to evaluate the taxonomic status of Northern Pygmy Owls) were recently notified that they will receive funding for their work from the Colorado...

Congrats to Sara Padula, a second-year PhD student in the lab, who was granted a 2024 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship! The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students who are pursuing full-time research-based master's and doctoral degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) or in STEM education...

The "smart feeder" arrays up and running at the Mountain Research Station!

Members of the Taylor lab are busy in the field these days, braving the cold and snow to collect exciting data on black-capped and mountain chickadees. Haley is conducting feeder-based agression experiments in Boulder, Nikki has been getting our nest boxes ready for the 2024 breeding season, and Sara, Ajay,...

Huge congratulations to Haley who was recently awarded a Stearns Prize from the European Society for Evolutionary Biology and the Journal of Evolutionary Biology for her paper examining the influence of between-species color pattern differences on chickadee mate choice. Stay tuned for her follow-up work here in Colorado! You can...

Members of the Taylor Lab past and present recently attended the 2023 joint meeting of the American Ornithological Society and the Society of Canadian Ornithologists in London Ontario. Great talks and posters were presented by everyone. It is always great to catch up with colleagues and build new friendships at...

With the banding of our final mountain chickadee nest at the CU Boulder Mountain Research Station this morning, the 6th season of the Boulder Chickadee Study comes to an end. Thanks to the hard work of Haley, Nikki, Sara, Will, Ajay, Olivia, Athena, and Macy as well as our numerous...