Birds of a Feather Learn Together

WYOBIRD program empowers students, contributes to international databases

Who hasn’t had their attention caught by the darting movement of a hummingbird, the call of a chickadee, or the slow circling of a bird of prey?

A woman in a black puffy jacket and green beanie holding a small gray bird with an orange eye, orange wing, and white stomach. — Mary De Aquino, PhD student in Corey Tarwater’s lab, holding a spotted towhee at the fall bird banding station. Photo by Ted Brummond.

The new Wyoming Bird Initiative for Resilience and Diversity (WYOBIRD) program was built for exactly this kind of observation. “Science is really about having curiosity, connecting with the natural world — wanting to understand what we see around us,” comments Corey Tarwater, director of WYOBIRD and an associate professor in the UW Department of Zoology and Physiology.

WYOBIRD’s mission is to conduct novel research on birds, train undergraduate and graduate students, and share science through public outreach. Through the WYOBIRD initiative, students get a hands-on introduction to ornithology in addition to gaining marketable skills, a sense of community, and a chance to direct their own education. They also have opportunities to gain ornithology skills through workshops, invited speakers, and fieldwork.

Students help determine what projects and presentations WYOBIRD introduces. “I’ve been really surprised how meaningful WYOBIRD is for students,” says Tarwater. “It’s a phenomenal experience, being able to play a bigger role in their education.”

That’s the other thing about WYOBIRD: its reach goes beyond the Department of Zoology and Physiology, and even beyond UW. Students from any department are welcome to join WYOBIRD, which can provide internship hours. WYOBIRD hopes to expand paid undergraduate and graduate opportunities as the initiative continues to grow.

Students in the program participate in WYOBIRD’s research projects, conduct public outreach, and receive support for their own independent research. Currently, the program has two major research projects — a nest box study and a fall bird-banding station.

Several black birds nestled together in hay in a wooden box. — Tree swallow nestlings. Photo by Katie Schabron.

Nest box study

The nest box study was set up 10 years ago as a collaboration between the Boy Scouts of America, the Audubon Society, and a UW graduate student. The Boy Scouts created enough birdhouses for about 400 tree swallow nestlings in the Hutton National Wildlife Refuge, a beautiful pond-filled area 20 minutes outside Laramie.

For the past 10 years, Audubon has checked the nest boxes and compiled data. “They were happy to let us take it over so we could give undergrads experience with how research is conducted and how nest box studies work,” says Tarwater.

Twice per week, students check up on the nests and record whether there are eggs or nestlings, as well as the birds’ behaviors, such as feeding their young — or group attacking the erstwhile researchers!

Some of the data WYOBIRD collects is entered into NestWatch database, a nationwide nest-monitoring program that allows large-scale comparisons of the breeding biology of birds across the United States.

Fall bird banding

WYOBIRD’s other research project follows a similar model. From August to October, WYOBIRD members banded birds by the Laramie River to try to understand birds’ fall migrations.

Two warmly dressed women carefully remove birds from a net while another woman looks on. They are in a forested area. — Students remove birds from a mist net at the fall bird banding station. From right to left, Kim Jordan, M.S. student in Corey Tarwater’s lab, Erin Stewart, M.S. student in Patrick Kelley’s lab, and undergraduate banding intern Therese Turner. Photo by Erik Schoenborn.

Graduate students with a background in banding ran the program, with help from WYOBIRD faculty. The program also trained six undergraduate interns, providing undergraduates with hands-on practice and graduate students with mentorship experience.

Twice a week, members of WYOBIRD set up mist nets to temporarily capture migrating birds. Mist nets are like see-through volleyball nets that catch birds without harming them. Birds were measured, aged, sexed, and banded with a unique number. This band allows other mist-netting efforts to track specific birds or species, and it gives WYOBIRD the chance to see if the bird comes back next year. After its band was applied, each bird was let go to continue on its migration.

WYOBIRD netted about 800 birds of 50 different species in 2023, and 25 people participated in the banding process. They gathered information about Wyoming’s unique place in fall migration cycles and contributed to a larger understanding of fall migrations across North and South America.

Through collaboration and community, WYOBIRD demonstrates that we aren’t just limited to questions about our own little nest box. Together, the sky is the limit.

To learn more, contact Tarwater at corey.tarwater@uwyo.edu.

This article was originally published in the 2024 issue of Reflections, the annual research magazine published by the UW College of Agriculture, Life Sciences and Natural Resources.