The nestlings on campus are fledging! This means that they have grown their flight feathers and the muscles needed to sustain flight, and either have just left their nest or will soon. Parent chickadees will continue to care for their offspring by bringing them food, or by leading them to...

This semester’s challenge was… Biscuits & Scones! With more submissions than ever, the Spring 2019 Taylor Lab Bake-off set celebrity guest judge Dr. Erica Larson to task with carefully evaluating the crumb, the flavor, the creativity, and of course the bake of a very crowded table of treats. Judge’s Choice...

The 2019 field season is up and running for the Boulder Chickadee Study! Our high elevation sites are still pretty snowy, but the birds in Boulder are keeping our team of undergraduate and Ph.D. students busy as they hustle to check nests, band birds, and collect data. Keep it up!

Erik was recently awarded the Donald L. Bleitz Award, a small research grant from the American Ornithological Society. The proposal he submitted to them was titled "Evolutionary impacts of historical and contemporary changes in habitat on alpine specialists". He will use this funding to conduct some whole genome sequencing of...

Scott will be teaching Field Ornithology at the Mountain Research Station this summer, July 1st through the 18th! Students will study alpine and subalpine birds and will learn to implement various field techniques. More information, including links for course registration, can be found here .

Angela and Erik were both awarded a Graduate Student Research Award from the Society of Systematic Biologists!! This will help fund Erik’s investigation of the Gray-crowned / Black Rosy-Finch hybrid zone in Montana and Idaho. The money will be used to sequence individuals to evaluate introgression and to better understand...

Along with collaborators Amber Rice from Lehigh University and Tim Roth from Franklin and Marshall College, the Taylor Lab has received NSF funding to explore the role that cognitive breakdown in hybrid chickadees may play in maintaining species barriers between hybridizing black-capped and Carolina chickadees. Our role will focus on...

One of our undergraduate students, Katherine Feldmann, has decided to complete a Master of Arts in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in addition to her bachelor's degree. The concurrent program enables students to complete both degrees in five years. This additional time in our lab will enable Katherine to take on...

Scott collaborated with researchers from Cornell, Ohio, and Pennsylvania to investigate a tip from a birder about an odd sighting. Read the full paper here. https://www.colorado.edu/asmagazine/2018/12/03/declining-warblers-making-best-bad-situation Graphic shows predicted family tree of warblers leading to the three-species hybrid. Blue-winged, Golden-winged, and Brewster's Warblers by Liz Clayton Fuller; Chestnut-sided Warbler from...

DNA extractions from the 2018 field season are done! Katherine F. and Kathryn G. tackled DNA extractions for all chickadees from the 2018 field season. These samples will be included in a larger population genomics sampling project.