Vernal • Sierra Hastings stood just outside Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area, cradling a small gray-crowned rosy finch in her hands. After a nearly four-hour journey from the Salt Lake Valley, this was the moment she had been waiting for.
Next to Hastings, the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources had set ground traps to capture finches for tagging, while hundreds of the pink-tinted birds swirled overhead. On Saturday, the division welcomed the public to witness the process firsthand, offering a rare glimpse into researchers’ efforts to study one of Utah’s least-understood bird species.
After a few moments in Hastings’ hands, the freshly banded bird fluttered its wings and took flight, disappearing into the February sky.
“I was in bird heaven,” Hastings said.
During the event, DWR captured, banded, and released 105 new rosy finches. The sight was astonishing to Hastings, who, despite her role as a spokesperson at Sageland Collaborative — a Salt Lake City nonprofit dedicated to understanding these birds — had never seen one in person.
(Sierra Hastings) Gray-crowned rosy finches photographed during a Division of Wildlife Resources viewing event in Vernal on Saturday, Feb. 8.
“They’re pretty elusive,” she said. “You don’t just see them down here in the city.”
So much left to learn
These birds, considered a conservation concern in Utah, typically nest among the steep, rocky slopes of the state’s highest peaks. According to the state wildlife division, gray-crowned rosy finches likely hold the North American record for breeding at the highest elevations.
In addition to their extreme nesting habits, they hold another distinction — they are one of the least-understood and studied birds in the state because their choice in nest location makes them incredibly difficult to track. Through collaborations between multiple nonprofit and state organizations, however, Utah biologists have recently made strides in understanding the blush-colored birds.
What they’ve learned so far is simple: There’s still so much more to discover, like how many exist, where they’re migrating and how a changing climate affects them.
Each winter, there are three tagging sites with bird feeders that support efforts to study Utah’s population of the finches — one near Flaming Gorge and others at two of the state’s ski resorts: Powder Mountain and Alta.
The peak of rosy finch research falls around Valentine’s Day, said DWR conservation biologist Brian Maxfield, who leads the project in Vernal. With dusky plumage accented by delicate pink, the bird may seem like a perfect fit for the holiday — but scientists aren’t drawn to them for their romantic hues.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) A gray-crowned rosy finch at Powder Mountain on Wednesday, March 2, 2022.
In reality, Maxfield said, winter is simply the best time to get a glimpse of this hard-to-reach species. High above the tree line, where most people would rather avoid the bitter cold, rosy finches thrive. He said the birds show up at Vernal feeders usually at the end of January or early February.
“They’re a weird bird,” he said. “When we go do research and do surveys, we don’t like to go out when it’s cold, snowy, windy. But these birds love snow and wind.”
Maxfield’s Valentine’s Day plans include checking on his flock, especially with a storm in the forecast — a surefire way to draw the finches to the feeders.
Tied to the weather
Because rosy finches nest along the cliff edges of Kings Peak and the highest slopes of Powder Mountain, they are especially vulnerable to losing habitat — particularly black rosy finches, the most at-risk of the species, said DWR biologist Adam Brewerton.
“Because these environments are so extreme,” said Brewerton, who manages Powder Mountain’s flock, “and they teeter on this balance between when it’s winter, when it’s spring, and when it’s winter again, the timing of when breeding happens, the locations where they breed, and the food resources that they need when they’re breeding are all very closely interconnected with annual weather patterns.”
(Mark Hadley) The tagging site at Powder Mountain, where researchers track and study rosy finches.
As those weather patterns shift, he said, these alpine environments — and the species that inhabit them — will be the first impacted.
But the main reason for studying the birds is for the sake of the finches themselves, Brewerton said, and to fill gaps in our knowledge of them. After more than five years of various organizations gathering data on them, there are more questions to be asked.
For now, Brewerton thinks it’s important for Utahns simply to know that this unique bird exists.
“What other bird thinks, ‘Oh, I’m going to fly south for the winter and spend it on top of a mountain in, like, below-zero, blowing blizzards?’” Brewerton said. “Like, you can fly. And Mexico exists.”
