University of Montana Bird Ecology Lab

09/30/2026

Welcome to the new UMBEL raptor banding station......jk, but that's what it felt like when we captured and banded 3 different juvenile male Sharp-shinned Hawks at our MPG Ranch fall migration station yesterday 😏

🦅This species of bird eating hawk exhibits quite dramatic sexual size dimorphism, with males being smaller than the females (wing length of around 170mm in ♂️ vs. 202 in ♀️). As for ageing, juveniles are easily distinguished by their vertical brown chest streaks (vs. horizontal rufous barring in adults), yellow eyes (which will turn redder with age), and brown back feathers with rufous edging (these will be replaced with slaty adult feathers). Check out the color variation in yesterday's captures, the last 3 photos are of the same particularly rufous individual! 🦅

Fall Migration has definitely slowed in the last 2 weeks, as expected, but we are hoping for a few more pushes of late season migrants! We still have yet to capture some of the true harbingers of the end of fall migration, such as American Tree and White-throated Sparrow. 🐦

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

University of Montana

09/25/2026

For ✨ ✨ we want to highlight this year's Bird’s-Eye View Education Program Intern, Kintla Thomas!

Kintla is a born and raised Missoulian who is just starting her 2nd year of undergraduate studies in Biology (with a concentration on ecology and evolution) and Environmental Studies at Colby College in Maine. She is also an avid runner and competes on the Colby Cross Country and Distance Track teams! 🥼👟🎽🐦

Kintla was out with us most MAPS banding mornings this summer, gaining experience with all things bird banding! She also recorded the bulk of our data and, as we sit down to review and enter all of it, we are finding ourselves incredibly grateful for her diligence and IMMACULATE handwriting! From us and the birds- THANK YOU Kintla for all your hard work this summer!!! 🐦 ❤️ 🐦

09/23/2026

🦅Last weekend some of the UMBEL crew volunteered to count migrating raptors for the Glacier NP Mt. Brown Hawkwatch! 🦅

It was an excellent two mornings counting at this stunning site, with good numbers of Broad-winged Hawk (including a dark morph adult!), lots of Sharp-shinned and Cooper's Hawks, and eye-level passes of Golden Eagles! It's always a treat when we can help out other research projects in western Montana ❤️ 🌄 ❤️

Glacier National Park Citizen Science Glacier National Park

09/16/2026

It's been our busiest week of the fall so far at our migration station on MPG Ranch! 72, 61, and 67 captures the first 3 days! According to BirdCast, there's still about a week to go of peak migration for Missoula county and then things should really start tapering off 🍃 🍂 🍁

Enjoy this eye candy 👁️ 🍬 👁️ of some recent warbler highlights! Two uncommon species for our nets followed by our most common fall warbler capture. All gorgeous After Hatch Year birds that had finished or were just finishing their big annual molt, ready for the long road ahead to the wintering grounds ❤️

1) Ovenbird
2) Northern Waterthrush
3) Wilson's Warbler ♂️

*All birds handled by trained professionals under appropriate permits*

09/16/2026

09/11/2026

Have you ever been lucky enough to spot a Virginia Rail???

🐦 We had a some great looks at a Virginia Rail this year while monitoring bird response to restoration of O'Dell Creek on Granger 🐦

Marsh birds- such as rails, bitterns, and grebes- spend much of their time hidden in dense wetland vegetation. So, UMBEL has been teaming up with Montana Audubon to complete targeted surveys using recordings of their calls to improve our chances of detecting these secretive species.

Over 90% of our observations are auditory, so sightings like this are a real treat. What a beauty!! 😍

VIRA photo credit: Bo Crees!

NorthWestern Energy

09/03/2026

✨ We had two very exciting visitors to the banding station this week! ✨

Dr. Leslie Rissler, seen here releasing a Swainson’s Thrush, joined us in the field on Monday to learn about our research projects and ongoing fall migration monitoring at MPG Ranch ! Dr. Rissler is the Dean of the newly formed University of Montana College of Science, which comprises 8 science and mathematics departments. Her impressive research career includes studying ecological niches and phylogeography of herpetofauna, serving in various executive leadership roles at the National Science Foundation, bringing awareness to gender differences in the STEM fields, annnd she has a background in bird ecology 😁 🐦 😁, having conducted her M.S. work studying habitat structure of rare birds of prey: Northern Goshawk and Spotted Owl. UMBEL is proud to host and meet Dr. Rissler who will help oversee work being done at our R1 institution. We are excited about future intersections with this new College of Science!

The other esteemed guest who visited our nets was this (slide 2&3) tiny hatch-year male Sharp-shinned Hawk, still sporting his juvenile plumage and pale eyes. It was a lovely way to start the week! 😊

University of Montana

08/26/2026

🍁 Migration is happening! Last week, we started our 16th year of Fall Migration Banding on the MPG Ranch floodplain! 🍁

🐦 This time of year is always exciting for birds. We get to see a variety of species that may not have bred on the floodplain moving through and using the habitat to molt and fatten up! With so many young-of-the-year on the landscape we also ge to see a lot of fresh juvenile plumage, molt limits and "molt limits in progress"!

Here are some recent highlights!

Photo 1: a beautiful Hatch Year Red-eyed Vireo, note that the eye color has yet to turn very red!

Photo 2: Hatch Year Willow Flycatcher, in it's crispy, buffy edged juvenile plumage. Many of our flycatchers don't typically molt until reaching the wintering grounds

Photo 3: Hatch Year Chipping Sparrow undergoing it's Preformative Molt but still with a lot of juvenile body plumage

Photo 4: Hatch Year Western Wood-Pewee, also sporting buffy edged juvenile wing coverts

Photo 5: a subtle A1 molt limit on a Hatch Year Orange-Crowned Warbler which recently finished it's partial Preformative Molt

Photo 6: another Hatch Year Orange-Crowned Warbler in the process of a partial Preformative Molt

08/21/2026

We recently recaptured two Swainson's Thrushes at MPG Ranch that we had tagged with Motus transmitters back in 2024!

🌎 Swainson’s Thrushes don’t seem to breed at our MPG banding station, but show up in this riparian habitat in late summer. Taking advantage of the abundance of food and thick cover to fuel for migration and stay safe during their big annual molt. It never ceases to amaze us how these ~30 gram travelers can navigate the hemisphere year after year to complete their life cycle! 🌎

First slide: We’d captured this bird twice before at this station, 9/3/24 when we tagged it and then again 8/13/25 when we determined that the tag was still functioning and left it deployed. Between those two captures, this bird had – at a minimum – flown all the way to Costa Rica and back! Some interesting tidbits from a quick look at the data:

🧭 It took this bird about a month to get from MT to Costa Rica, this epic journey included 500-mile nonstop flights over open water of the gulf.

🧭 The following spring, it was first detected in the US in coastal Texas and made it back to the Bitterroot Valley in 19 days from there.

🧭 All 3 captures of this bird were in two nets that are within 20 meters of each other! Site fidelity (or site faithfulness) is more typically related to breeding and wintering sites, but these birds appear to have high site fidelity for molting grounds 🤔

We checked the Motus data during this capture (8/4/26), determined that the nanotag was no longer functioning and removed it to release the bird unburdened 🫡

Second slide: We first captured this bird around the same time of year way back in 2021 when it was identified as a hatch-year! Upon recapture in 2024, we fitted it with a Motus tag and tracked it all the way down to at least central Colombia during that fall migration! 😲

Motus towers tracked its return to MT via the gulf coast the following summer. We got one more migration track in fall of '25, with the last detection, Oct. 10th, near Veragua Rainforest, Costa Rica.

During this year's encounter, we were able to liberate this now 5-year-old bird of its harness! 🫡

08/13/2026

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