What We Are Proud Of: Milestones, Research, and Resilience

occupied territories we have had since 2018. As an interesting observation, we had four nests where the female was a Second-Year (1-year-old) bird.

This is a rare occurrence as second-year female birds can breed, but usually don’t. Most years we do not find any. Two of these young birds successfully fledged three young, which is also rare. Young breeders usually have smaller broods (often only one) and higher chances of failure (often 50% or more).

the pine and the crossbill are in an evolutionary arms race where both have become more robust over time. This unique system, and the relatively small area where it occurs, presented an opportunity to build an improved model that predicts the location of lodgepole pine. This ultimately gets us closer to our objective of understanding Cassia Crossbill ecology.

Over the past two years, we used satellite imagery and a (in vogue) handy machine learning platform to drastically improve our model for lodgepole pile. This has allowed us to more precisely estimate the crossbill’s population, but most importantly, provide a valuable resource for the management of critical habitat for the Cassia Crossbill.

Currently, the US Forest Service is using IBO’s model to plan prescribed fire and lodgepole pine management. In the future, we hope to provide a fine-scale, highly accurate resource that can be used to bolster the only place in the world where breeding Cassia Crossbills are found: Idaho! Each fall, my crew and I brave rutting moose and high mountain adventures in pursuit of this goal.

their work during the poster session. Our very own Eden Ravecca won the best poster award for her work with Black Kite wing morphology!

Greg presented on 32 years (yes, 32!) of raptor banding on the Boise Ridge, highlighting findings from our research and the value of IBO’s long-term monitoring for teaching, training, and mentoring students and young professionals. Rob presented on IBO’s Short-eared Owl monitoring project and Flammulated Owl survey project. Overall, a great showing for IBO and Boise State at the conference. And, it was also touching to see just how many professionals and students at the conference have had some past connection to IBO and BSU!

how changes in habitat due to decreased water availability have impacted migratory songbirds, with particular interest in key species, including the Wilson’s Warbler and Hermit Thrush. The refuge still hosts a remarkable number of birds, although there have been some big changes since 2007, and even some notable differences between the 2023 and 2024 seasons.

Since 2007, the refuge headquarters area where we band has experienced a significant loss of wooded riparian habitat.

There has been a notable decrease in captures of species that like more wooded habitat like Wilson’s Warblers (4,219 from 2005-2007 vs 2,012 from 2023-2024) and Hermit Thrushes (1,084 vs 275). However, there has also been a big increase in species that favor more open habitat, like White-crowned Sparrows (249 vs 1,644) and nonnative House Sparrows (4 vs 541). We also saw some interesting changes between the two recent fall seasons. In 2023 we caught 65 Lark Sparrows and 84 Sage Thrashers, whereas this past fall we caught no Lark Sparrows and only 3 Sage Thrashers!

Was last year an unusually good year for these species, was this year unusually low, or maybe both? 

All these changes are likely heavily influenced by the difference in habitat, but it’s also important to note that for the past four years, we have experienced a sustained drop in numbers at our Lucky Peak site as well. This combined with a number of studies that have shown population declines in North American birds suggests that the drop in numbers at the Camas site may also be due to a larger scale decline in songbird populations. 

In addition to our normal banding operations, we were also able to deploy 9 Motus tags this year. These tags weigh less than 3% of the bird’s total body weight and allow us to track their migration and stopovers. When a tagged bird flies by a Motus station, the tower detects the tag, allowing us to track the bird’s migration. This spring and fall, we fit six Western Tanagers, two Bullock’s Orioles, and one Gray Catbird with Motus tags, hoping to detect them as they move north and south. We were excited to see that one of our tanagers tagged in the spring was detected at two different stations in Montana,

 and another was detected at a station in Salmon, Idaho!

Then in the fall, a Western Tanager and Bullock’s Oriole were detected at Motus stations around the Great Salt Lake. The tanager was then detected at a station in southwest New Mexico a week later! A few of the birds we tagged don’t have any detections after leaving the refuge (yet) – this is normal and likely just means they didn’t fly close enough to another Motus station for their signal to be detected. We hope to continue gathering data throughout future spring and fall migrations. Although we’ve already learned a lot from our work at Camas NWR the last two years, I’m left with more questions than answers, and I hope to be back banding there again before too long!

Did you know that YOU can access this cool migratory movement data?!

Check out motus.org to learn more about the network and to look at receiver locations and detections! You can view maps for each of our tagged birds here, or view an animated map for all our birds here.

Motus Data and Maps

2024. Intermountain West Collaborative – IBO Project. Data accessed from the Motus Wildlife Tracking System.

2024. Intermountain West Collaborative – IBO Project. Data accessed from the Motus Wildlife Tracking System. Birds Canada.