ChickadeeNews

Olivia, Kathryn, and Carrie's work on chickadee song is featured in Living Bird magazine!

Scott Anthony Taylor — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 16:11:41 +0000

Olivia, Kathryn, and Carrie's work on chickadee song is featured in Living Bird magazine! Scott Anthony Taylor Tue, 07/22/2025 - 10:11

A recent article in Living Bird magazine featured Olivia Taylor's honors thesis work (published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology) that was a collaboration between Olivia, Kathryn, and Carrie Branch.

So awesome to see a published undergraduate honors thesis form the lab grace the pages of Living Bird! The article included a lovely descriptive graphic of some of our findings from the Boulder Chickadee Study!

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The 2025 field season has flown by!

Scott Anthony Taylor — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 14:49:18 +0000

The 2025 field season has flown by! Scott Anthony Taylor Mon, 07/07/2025 - 08:49

The 2025 summer field season has flown by with the last chickadee nests at the Mountain Research Station of the season scheduled to be banded on July 12. Folks have been busy collecting data for their individual projects along with our annual Boulder Chickadee Study data. Check out updates from the field team below!

Sam: since discovering the legs growths I'm studying are actually caused by scaly leg mites and not avian pox virus, I've been doing a lot of reading. I've also spending plenty of time in the field checking boxes, learning how to band, and taking samples!

Jenna: the field season at the MRS is going great so far, with 27 active nests and 4 hatched Mountain Chickadee nests. Nestling and adult banding is set to start this week.

Sara: the 2025 field season is off to a strong start! I’ve been busy helping with adult banding, nest box checks, and mite sampling, while also helping train the newest members of the Boulder Chickadee Study team.

Eva: this season, I’ve been working in the field doing observational studies to compare black-capped and mountain chickadees in the Boulder area as they feed and care for their young. Tracking the behaviors of these birds across a wide range of elevations has been fascinating, and I look forward to transforming the patterns I find into an honors thesis in the coming semesters!

Nate: this field season I have been collecting data about how long different mountain and black-capped chickadee females are spending incubating their eggs using temperature loggers placed in the nest. I have also been collecting those nests when the nestlings leave, as well as helping out other people with their own projects within the Boulder Chickadee Study.

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Sam, Nate, Eva, and the lab are awarded UROP funding!

Scott Anthony Taylor — Wed, 14 May 2025 00:13:26 +0000

Sam, Nate, Eva, and the lab are awarded UROP funding! Scott Anthony Taylor Tue, 05/13/2025 - 18:13

Congrats to Sam, Nate, and Eva for receiving individual UROP awards to support their summer research! All three are collecting data for their honors thesis projects. Sam will be studying pox virus in our local chickadee populations, Nate will be study incubation patterns in chickadees, and Eva will be studying variation in parental provisioning behavior. We're excited to see what they all find!

The lab also received UROP funding that will be used to continue the Boulder Chickadee Study.

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Nate, Sam, and Sara are awarded research grants from the Denver Field Ornithologists!

Scott Anthony Taylor — Sun, 02 Mar 2025 01:11:31 +0000

Nate, Sam, and Sara are awarded research grants from the Denver Field Ornithologists! Scott Anthony Taylor Sat, 03/01/2025 - 18:11

Congrats to Nate, Sam, and Sara for being awarded research grants from the Denver Field Ornithologists! Nate will use his funds to study incubation patterns and differences between black-capped and mountain chickadees. Sam will use her funds to study avian pox virus. Sara will use hers to sequence whole genomes of black-capped chickadees as she continues to study the genetics of spatial cognition.

Thanks to the Denver Field Ornithologists for their continued support of Taylor Lab research!

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Sara and Sam are awarded Colorado Filed Ornithologists grants!

Scott Anthony Taylor — Wed, 26 Feb 2025 20:26:29 +0000

Sara and Sam are awarded Colorado Filed Ornithologists grants! Scott Anthony Taylor Wed, 02/26/2025 - 13:26

Congratulations to Sara and Sam for recently being awarded research grants from the Colorado Field Ornithologists!

Sara will use her funds to sequence black-capped chickadee genomes as she continues to explore the genetic basis of variation in spatial cognition in chickadees.

Sam will use her funds to sequence samples of probable avian pox infections in chickadees as part of her planned honors thesis work.

Thanks so much to the Colorado Field Ornithologists for their continued support of our research!

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Chickadee hybridization research featured in Scientific American!

Scott Anthony Taylor — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 22:19:09 +0000

Chickadee hybridization research featured in Scientific American! Scott Anthony Taylor Wed, 11/13/2024 - 15:19

The October issue of Scientific American featured a story about chickadee hybridization by Rebecca Heisman that highlighted ongoing work in the lab:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hybrid-chickadees-reveal-how-species-boundaries-can-shift-and-blur/

Very cool to see work from the lab and conducted by our close collaborators featured in the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States. Scientific American has been print since 1845!

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Scott discussed the Boulder Chickadee Study on How on Earth!

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 00:28:04 +0000

Scott discussed the Boulder Chickadee Study on How on Earth! Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/01/2024 - 18:28

Scott recently discussed the Boulder Chickadee Study with Host Susan Moran from How on Earth, the KGNU Science Show. Listen here!

https://howonearthradio.org/archives/9639

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The 2024 summer field season comes to a close

Anonymous — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 00:45:43 +0000

The 2024 summer field season comes to a close Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 07/14/2024 - 18:45

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 County were recaptured (with some getting new color bands this season) for a total 561 chickadees handled during the season. Nikki also monitored multiple chickadee nests with nest cams and the data from those will be examined during the fall semester.

The completion of the 6th year of the Boulder Chickadee Study makes it eligible for long-term study funding from the National Science Foundation and Scott will be working on that grant in the coming weeks.

Will also completed his first solo PhD field season sampling house wrens across Colorado and Nebraska collecting blood samples from 87 house wrens and travelling over 2000 miles as he attempts to better define the region of contact between the eastern and western subspecies. He also sampled a number of yellow breasted chats for a previous Taylor Lab undergraduate student, Johanna Beam, who is completing her PhD at Penn State University.

Congrats all on an excellent field season!

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Olivia publishes her honors thesis in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology!

Anonymous — Sat, 13 Jul 2024 19:38:08 +0000

Olivia publishes her honors thesis in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology! Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 07/13/2024 - 13:38

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 Olivia, her transition from music to studying bird song was a natural decision that followed her love of music and more, importantly, her curiosity about its nature. Olivia and her co-authors found that mountain chickadees in Boulder County sing different songs than mountain chickadees in California, but that black-capped chickadees in Colorado do not sound different from black-capped chickadees elsewhere. This is a potential example of either reproductive or agonistic character displacement! More work will be required to determine which one, but the initial results are very exciting. Congrats Olivia!

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2024 field season updates!

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 04:55:35 +0000

2024 field season updates! Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 06/30/2024 - 22:55

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 be the most nests the Boulder Chickadee Study has ever seen!

Haley: Haley is conducting a mate choice experiment to understand whether females use color pattern to differentiate between potential black-capped and mountain chickadee mates.

Sage: This field season I have gained surveying skills when observing chickadee provisioning habits and have greatly enjoyed assisting in bird banding!

Will: The field season has been great thus far, I have caught 87 house wrens and we have had record numbers of nests up at the MRS.

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