ChickadeeNews

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...

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...

Congrats to Angela and her coauthors Kathryn, Mia, and Vanessa for their recently accepted publication in Ornithology ! The lay summary of the paper, which is about avian malaria in our local Colorado chickadees, is below! Lay Summary: Haemosporidians are a diverse group of vector-transmitted parasites that infect birds and...

Abi, Sara, Ajay, Will, Peter, Georgy, and Scott recently attended the 2023 Evolution meeting in Albuquerque New Mexico. This was the first large meeting for Abi, Sara, Ajay, and Will! Sara and Ajay presented posters about their upcoming PhD work, Will gave a talk about his undergraduate work on house...

The 5th season of the Boulder Chickadee Study is in full swing with many chickadees raising young in Boulder and eggs about to hatch the higher elevation sites! One of our landowners has set up a livestream on the black-capped chickadee nest on their property. You can view it here:...

Congratulations to Olivia who recently defended her honors thesis! For her honors thesis Olivia studied the songs of black-capped and mountain chickadees in regions where they both occur (Boulder County, Colorado) compared to regions where they do not overlap. She found that mountain chickadees sound more different from black-capped chickadees...