When conservation biologist Shawn Pladas saw it was dumping snow at the top of Little Cottonwood Canyon, he was excited.
“You guys came on a good weather day,” he told the group of scientists. “All our other days have been super warm and nice.”
It’s not that Pladas loves the cold, it’s because rosy-finches thrive in it.
The tiny birds with pink-tinged wings have adapted to live in the mountain peaks of the western United States. When the weather is cold like this, the finches are the most active. With climate change, however, the zones with the temperatures these birds rely on are shrinking, and so are their numbers.
So a group of biologists from the Utah Department of Natural Resources have been driving up the canyon every other week to monitor the birds since 2019. But it takes a long time to get the kind of data they need when they’re only marking a few birds at a time.
“There are some big data gaps around rosy-finches so that’s kind of what this work is doing,” Pladas said. “That’s gonna help us better understand where they need to be placed as far as sensitive species go.”
They set up nets near the bird feeders that the rosy-finches frequent. Once a bird is caught, a tiny band is placed around its foot with a tracking number. Some are given a radio frequency identification tag that tracks them when they land at feeders placed throughout the mountains. They also record other data, measuring everything from the length of its beak to the size of its feathers. Then they place it in a repurposed pill bottle to get the bird's weight before releasing it.
Technician Lexi Chamberlain said they’ve mostly been catching the gray-crowned rosy-finch. They’re also looking for the black rosy-finch, which has been endangered since 2018. Between 2019 and 2022 they were able to catch and band 42 black rosy-finches, and 523 gray crowned rosy-finches.
Tracking these birds helps biologists understand a lot about their needs, she said. But it will take more than just biologists to solve the problem.
“You can pass bills in order to protect certain species, you can protect their habitats especially, and just showing people species that are affected by climate change can get other people involved in order to change.”
Chamberlain said she remains optimistic because she’s seen other species rebound from dire circumstances, and knows there are a lot of good people working to make that happen more.
