Long known for its large mammals, Yellowstone National Park has an abundance and diversity of birds too often overshadowed by grizzlies, wolves, elk and bison. Large numbers of songbirds flood in during springtime, as do common loons and many raptors. Others like golden eagles and trumpeter swans reside year-round. Either way, there are many bird riches in the world’s first national park.
On Monday, December 10th, join Sacajawea Audubon at Downtown Bozeman’s Ellen Theatre for special holiday program “Yellowstone’s Forgotten Birds” featuring Doug Smith, a Senior Wildlife Biologist in Yellowstone National Park. The evening will begin at 6:30pm with a social component, followed by the main program at 7pm. This event is free and open to the public, but a $5 donation is suggested and appreciated.
Please come hear about how the park has recently expanded its songbird monitoring programs including becoming a MAPS (Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survival) site – one of many across the US and Canada – that involves mist netting for the first time in the history of the park. New projects with common loons, trumpeter swans (with a graduate student at Montana State), and golden eagles (with University of Montana) will also be highlighted, among other bird topics taking place in Yellowstone.
Doug Smith, Ph.D., supervises the wolf, bird and elk programs – formerly three jobs now combined into one under Smith’s supervision. His original job was the Project Leader for the Yellowstone Wolf Project, which involved the reintroduction and restoration of wolves to Yellowstone National Park. He helped establish this project and position. Smith received a B.S. degree in Wildlife Biology from the University of Idaho in 1985. He has published a wide variety of journal articles and book chapters on beavers, wolves, and birds and co-authored two popular books on wolves (The Wolves of Yellowstone and Decade of the Wolf, which won the 2005 Montana book award for best book published in Montana), as well as numerous popular articles. Smith’s third book, Wolves on the Hunt, released in May 2015.
His professional interests include wolf population dynamics, wolf-prey relationships, restoration of ecological processes, raptor conservation, and beaver population dynamics. He is a member of the Mexican Wolf Recovery Team, the Re-Introduction Specialist Group, and Canid Specialist Group for the IUCN. Besides wolves, birds and beavers, he is an avid canoeist preferring to travel mostly in the remote regions of northern Canada with his wife Christine and their two sons, Sawyer and Hawken.
Learn more about Sac Audubon at www.sacajaweaaudubon.org. To learn more about the birds of Yellowstone National Park, visit www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/birds.htm.