Ricketts Conservation Foundation’s 2025 bird banding season ran from May 31st to August 8th. With the help of our fantastic crew of seasonal bird biologists, and a summer of beautiful weather, we had a fun and very successful season of catching and studying breeding songbirds.
RCF biologists have been using bird banding to study avian breeding activity in different habitats around Monument Ridge since 2018. Following the MAPS protocol, RCF biologists capture a variety of small songbirds, take a series of measurements to access the bird’s health, and attach a small, lightweight metal ring to the bird’s leg with a unique 9-digit number.
In our first year, 3 stations were established to compare bird communities in areas affected by wildfire, areas scheduled for Forest Service prescribed thinning and controlled burning, and areas of old growth Aspen without any influence of fire. Our banding operation has grown over the years, and 2025 was our first year operating 9 banding stations- 3 for each type of area. We operate each station once every 10 days, for 6 hours starting just before sunrise; each site was operated 7 times over the course of the season.
Collectively we caught 49 species of birds, banded 1,450 individuals, and processed 431 recaptures. Of our recaptures, 145 were banded in the previous year. All our recaptures are of individuals that were banded at one of our sites in the area; we have not yet ever captured a bird banded away from our sites at Monument Ridge. Our oldest recapture this summer was a female Brown-headed Cowbird, who was banded as an adult in 2020, and is at least 6 years old now. Our most common species banded were Dark-eyed Junco (148), American Robin (115), and MacGillivray’s Warbler (115). Above is a chart of all of our captures from this summer.
All the banding sites are comprised of 10 mist nets suitable for capturing small birds, and we see variation in species composition and abundance in different habitats. In our wildfire burned sites, we have young regenerating stands of Aspen trees, which serve as excellent habitat for songbirds. In 2025, we banded a total of 679 birds at our wildfire sites. Due to a lack of fire-induced Aspen regeneration at our other sites, we catch fewer birds there- 460 were banded at our treatment sites (which have been thinned by the Forest Service but not burned) and 311 were banded at our control sites. Looking back at our 3 most frequently banded species of birds, we can see differences in their abundance at different sites. For our most common species, Dark-eyed Junco, only 12% were banded at the wildfire burn sites, and 88% were banded at the un-burned sites. However, for MacGillivray’s Warblers 57% were banded at our 3 wildfire sites, and the other 43% were spread out across the 6 un-burned sites. And then there’s American Robins, which were caught by fairly even numbers across all 9 sites.
This summer, RCF also had a hummingbird bander visit our sites to provide specialized training to our lead and experienced banders. Because of their very small size, hummingbirds require a separate permit to be allowed to band them. By training our banders to tag the hummingbirds captured at our sites, we plan to begin more closely studying how migrating hummingbirds are using the regenerating Aspen habitat in burned environments.
2025 was a historic year for RCF’s banding operation, and it would not have been possible without all the hard work of our seasonal banding crew- Amaya Bechler, Alan Moss, Wyatt Westerkamp, Aiden Gifford, and Cheyenne Esposito. Without their help and dedication, our terrific season would not have been possible! With the continued support of Ricketts Conservation Foundation, we look forward to continuing to use bird banding to study songbirds in the GYE and help inform forest management decisions to best conserve the beautiful diversity of migratory birds in our region.
