Author: Mark Brunson

Mark Brunson recently retired as a professor of Environment and Society at Utah State University, and he continues to study how people affect natural environments and are affected by them, especially in the deserts of the Great Basin and Four Corners regions. Mark is passionate about connecting science to people who can benefit from it. He has led outreach programs for land managers about wildfire and ecological restoration, and he serves as science director for The Nature Conservancy’s Canyonlands Research Center while also working with two Utah-based conservation nonprofits, Bear River Land Conservancy and Sageland Collaborative.
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A Long Winter’s Nap

Johnson Bottom on the Green River, Ouray National Wildlife Refuge, Courtesy US Fish & Wildlife Service, John Orlanda, Photographer
Johnson Bottom on the Green River, Ouray National Wildlife Refuge
Courtesy US Fish & Wildlife Service, John Orlanda, Photographer
One of the lesser-known natural, and underappreciated, areas in our state is found 32 miles south of Vernal in eastern Utah: the Ouray National Wildlife Refuge. My wife and I visited last July, hoping to see bird species we don’t find in other parts of the state. We enjoyed the birding, but what made the visit most memorable to me wasn’t birds, but fish.

Razerback Sucker Courtesy US FWS, Sam Stukel, Photographer
Razerback Sucker
Courtesy US FWS, Sam Stukel, Photographer

Humpback Chub Courtesy US FWS Humpback Chub
Courtesy US FWS

Bonytail Chub Courtesy US FWS Bonytail Chub
Courtesy US FWS

The refuge lies along the Green River, the largest tributary of the Colorado. If you drive far enough down the main refuge road, you’ll come to the Ouray National Fish Hatchery, dedicated to protecting three of the rarest fishes in North America: the bonytail, the humpback chub, and the razorback sucker.

All three of these species are confined to the Colorado River watershed, and all are on the federal Threatened and Endangered Species list. They’re desert fish, used to warm water. In fact, I learned that one reason why populations of these fish declined in the 1960s was that construction of the Flaming Gorge Dam upstream had made the Green River much cooler, as the water flowing through the dam was drawn from the coldest depths of the reservoir. That was great for trout, turning a 30-mile stretch of the Green into a world-renowned fishery. But it wasn’t so good for desert-adapted fish.

Learning this made me curious. The Ouray refuge is in the Uinta Basin. and it gets cold in the Basin in the winter. So, if cold water is bad for them, how have the bonytail, humpback chub, and razorback sucker survived there for thousands of years?

To answer that, it helps to understand the terms that anglers and fisheries biologists use. They refer to cold water species, like trout, kokanee, and whitefish, and warm water species like bass, perch, and catfish. The rare Green River species are warm water fish. But those labels aren’t about what temperatures the fish can survive, they’re about temperatures they experience when they thrive – during the warmer half of the year.

All fish are cold-blooded. More specifically, they’re ectothermic, getting their body heat from their environment, and poikilothermic, having a body temperature that fluctuates with the temperature of the waters where they live. To survive in winter, they go into a low-energy state called “torpor.” Their heart rate drops, their metabolism slows to a crawl, and their need for food is basically nonexistent. It’s like hibernation, except it happens in the deeper, slower water of a river instead of a cave or burrow.

That’s an important adaptation for the Colorado River fishes. Bonytail and humpback chub feed on insects, crustaceans, seeds and plants, occasionally small fish, all of which are much harder to find in the winter. Razorback suckers eat insects, plankton, and decaying plant matter – also less available in the winter months.

Now that we’re heading into springtime, when the weather gets warmer and the river along with it, both the fish and their prey are becoming active again.

Temperature is no longer a big threat to survival of these species. Flaming Gorge Dam has been re-engineered so that warmer water is drawn through its turbines. Also, flows through the dam are altered during spawning season to increase survival of fish larvae. The Ouray hatchery raises young fish to boost their population. The biggest threats to these species are habitat destruction and competition from non-native fishes. Those are challenges that are much harder to address. But it’s good to know there are biologists helping to recover the rare native fishes of the Green and Colorado Rivers.

I’m Mark Brunson, and I’m wild about Utah’s aquatic species and habitats.

Credits:

Images: Johnson Bottoms, Courtesy US FWS, John Orlanda, Photographer
Razerback Sucker, Courtesy US FWS, Sam Stuckel, Photographer
Bonytail Chub, Humpback Chub, Courtesy US FWS
Featured Audio: J. Chase and K.W. Baldwin as well as Friend Weller, https://upr.org/
Text: Mark Brunson, https://www.usu.edu/experts/profile/mark-brunson/
Additional Reading: Mark Brunson, https://www.usu.edu/experts/profile/mark-brunson/ & Lyle Bingham, Bridgerland Audubon Society

Additional Reading

Mark Brunson’s archive: https://wildaboututah.org/?s=brunson

Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, https://www.fws.gov/office/upper-colorado-river-endangered-fish-recovery-program/species

Ouray National Wildlife Refuge, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, https://www.fws.gov/refuge/ouray

Ouray National Fish Hatchery, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, https://www.fws.gov/fish-hatchery/ouray

Fish, Dinosaur National Park, National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/dino/learn/nature/fish.htm

Endangered Species Day: A look at how DWR, other agencies are helping razorback suckers in Utah, News, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, May 14, 2020. https://wildlife.utah.gov/news/utah-wildlife-news/919-endangered-species-day-helping-razorback-suckers.html

Where do fish go when it freezes outside?, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/fish-freeze.html

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Tiny Brain, Big Memory

Mountain Chickadee, Poecile gambeli, Courtesy US FWS, Anna Weyers Blades, Photographer
Mountain Chickadee, Poecile gambeli
Courtesy US FWS, Anna Weyers Blades, Photographer
Winter is a season when most of us spend more of our time indoors. But wild animals don’t have that option. Not only must they find ways to keep warm all winter, but they have to work harder to find food. That’s why so many songbirds take advantage of the seeds and suet supplied by us humans at our bird feeders. We do the work for them.

Pine Siskin, Spinus pinus, Courtesy US FWS, Courtney Celley, Photographer
Pine Siskin
Spinus pinus
Courtesy US FWS
Courtney Celley, Photographer

Red Breasted Nuthatch Courtesy US FWS Dave Menke, Photographer Red Breasted Nuthatch
Courtesy US FWS
Dave Menke, Photographer

Clark's Nutcracker Courtesy US Fish & Wildlife Service Dave Menke, Photographer Clark’s Nutcracker
Courtesy US Fish & Wildlife Service
Dave Menke, Photographer

Mountain Chickadee, Poecile gambeli, Courtesy Pixabay, BlenderTimer, Contributor Mountain Chickadee, Poecile gambeli
Courtesy Pixabay
BlenderTimer a.k.a.Daniel Roberts, Contributor

Over many years, I’ve learned which birds to expect at the feeders in our backyard. We host finches, sparrows, magpies, and doves year-round. In winter, we also see a lot of Black-capped Chickadees, American Goldfinches, Dark-eyed Juncos, and Pine Siskins. Those are species that spend the warmer months in the forested mountains near our home, then come down for the winter into town, where they know it’s easier to find food.

But other songbirds we only see a few times a year – ones that seem to survive just fine in the winter woods. That got me to wondering: How are they able to do that while others can’t or won’t? One survival strategy is to nibble all winter on food that they stored in the fall. It’s called seed-caching – that’s c-a-c-h-e, like the valley around Logan.

You may have heard of seed-caching by the Clark’s Nutcracker, well-known for its habit of burying the large seeds of limber pine and pinyon pine for later use. But that approach only works if you can remember where you stashed food a few months ago. Clark’s Nutcrackers are in the same family as crows, ravens, and jays – birds renowned for their cleverness, with a larger front part of their brains than other perching birds. What about smaller songbirds with tinier brains? Do they have good memories, too?

For some northern Utah songbirds that don’t rely as much on feeders, the answer seems to be “Yes.” They gather seeds, dried berries, and dead insects in the fall, and stash them under bark or in crevices in tree trunks for later use. These seed-caching birds include the Red-breasted Nuthatch, Juniper Titmouse, and Mountain Chickadee.

You might be wondering: “Wait, there’s two different kinds of chickadee? How are they different?” Well they’re pretty similar. The Mountain Chickadee’s song and call are a bit higher-pitched, and they sport a cute little white “eyebrow” that black-caps don’t have. And despite having a brain slightly larger than a pea, they have great memories.

Recently, some biologists conducted an ingenious experiment. They put radio tags on Mountain Chickadees, then hung out seed feeders equipped with radio frequency readers that would only open to certain individuals. That meant each bird would have to learn for itself which feeders were food sources for them. Then the scientists tracked how often the little critters would find the right feeders, and how long it took them to remember which ones to visit. For most individuals, it didn’t take long at all.

Then the researchers switched things up, changing the radio frequencies so the birds had to re-learn where they could find seeds. It turned out that the birds who learned fastest the first time had the most difficulty adjusting to the change. The scientists think this shows that it’s memory, and not exploratory foraging, that guides their feeding behavior.

Mountain Chickadees can live up to nine years, a long time for such a tiny bird. Having a good long-term memory helps them do that. I think that’s pretty awesome – even if it does keep them from visiting my feeders every winter.

I’m Mark Brunson, and I’m wild about Utah’s endlessly fascinating bird life.

Credits:

Images Mountain Chickadee, Courtesy US FWS, Anna Weyers Blades, Photographer
Red-breasted Nuthatch, & Clark’s Nutcracker, Courtesy US FWS, Dave Menke, Photographer
Pine Siskin, Courtesy US FWS, Courtney Celley, Photographer
Image Mountain Chickadee, Courtesy Pixabay, BlenderTimer a.k.a.Daniel Roberts, Contributor, https://pixabay.com/photos/mountain-chickadee-bird-animal-9971732/
Featured Audio: Courtesy & © Kevin Colver, https://wildstore.wildsanctuary.com/collections/special-collections
Text: Mark Brunson, https://www.usu.edu/experts/profile/mark-brunson/
Additional Reading: Mark Brunson, https://www.usu.edu/experts/profile/mark-brunson/ & Lyle Bingham, Bridgerland Audubon Society

Additional Reading

Mark Brunson’s archive: https://wildaboututah.org/?s=brunson

Mountain Chickadee. All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Mountain_Chickadee/overview

Mountain chickadees have remarkable memories. A new study explains why. Nevada Today, April 24, 2024. https://www.unr.edu/nevada-today/news/2024/chickadee-memory-genetic-tradeoffs

Greene, Jack, Bird Brains,, Wild About Utah, September 6, 2017, https://wildaboututah.org/bird-brains/

Greene, Jack, Clark’s Nutcracker, Wild About Utah, January 7, 2019, https://wildaboututah.org/clarks-nutcracker/

Hutson, Matthew. 2024. The Elephantine Memories of Food-Caching Birds. The New Yorker, Dec. 29, 2024. https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/the-elephantine-memories-of-food-caching-birds

Where is that bird going with that seed? It’s caching food for later. All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, April 13, 2016. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/where-is-that-bird-going-with-that-seed-its-caching-food-for-later/

Ye, Yvaine, Goda, Nicholas, Mountain chickadees have remarkable memories. A new study explains why, CU Boulder Today, University of Colorado Boulder, April 17, 2024, https://www.colorado.edu/today/2024/04/17/mountain-chickadees-have-remarkable-memories-new-study-explains-why

Cox, Sophie, The brain science of tiny birds with amazing memories, Duke Research Blog, Duke University, via Phys.org/Science X Network, March 27, 2023, https://phys.org/news/2023-03-brain-science-tiny-birds-amazing.html

Cache Valley Winter Backyard Birds, Bridgerland Audubon Society, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/BAS-ChristmasBirdCount-TallySheetV1.1.pdf

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Nature Out Your Front Door

Nature Out Your Front Door, Pavement Ants July 2025, Payson UT Courtesy & Copyright Lyle W. Bingham, Photographer
Pavement Ants
July 2025, Payson UT
Courtesy & Copyright Lyle W. Bingham, Photographer
If you’ve listened to these Wild About Utah segments for a while, you’ll have noticed that we tend to focus on places where humans don’t live. But what we call “nature” can flourish almost anywhere, including the places where people dominate.

I’m an avid runner and walker. And my town has done a lot of street and sidewalk work this year, so I’ve spent a lot of time looking down to make sure I don’t suddenly trip or step in a hole. Earlier this year, I was looking down while walking to my office, and I was amazed by how many ant colonies I was seeing on the sidewalks. Each colony included hundreds of tiny ants, milling around in what looked like random patterns. Some blocks had an ant swarm every 20 to 30 feet.

I’d seen them before, of course, but hadn’t realized just how ubiquitous they are. Being a scientist and therefore endlessly curious, I began to wonder: What are these ants doing when they swarm? And how do they all know to do it at the same time?

Nature Out Your Front Door, Pavement Ants July 2025, Payson UT Courtesy & Copyright Lyle W. Bingham, Photographer
Pavement Ants
July 2025, Payson UT
Courtesy & Copyright Lyle W. Bingham, Photographer
The particular species of ant that I was seeing – and I’m sure most of us have seen them at one time or another – is called the immigrant pavement ant. In some places they’re also called sugar ants, thanks to their nasty habit of sneaking into people’s kitchens to find sweet things to eat. They’re tiny, 2.5 to 4 millimeters long, shorter than a grain of rice. Originally native to Europe, some of them probably stowed away on a ship to America in colonial times. Now they’re widespread across North America.

As I watched closely, I realized that the ants’ movements weren’t entirely random. They would approach another ant, stop for a half second, then move on. That’s because one purpose of swarming is colony expansion. They wander around checking each other out. If an interloper from another colony enters the swarm and is recognized as a stranger, it will be attacked. Sometimes hundreds of ants can die in battles between neighboring colonies.

The other thing that happens when they’re swarming is mating. Some of the ants develop wings and take nuptial flights, when males and queens from different colonies take to the air and mate. They like to do this on clear, warm surfaces, when the days are long and hot sunlight has warmed the soil for a while. If each colony responds to the same environmental cue, it means there is a huge pool of prospective mates, which increases genetic diversity and colony success.

After mating, the males die and the queens, which are about twice as big as the other ants, fly off to start new colonies. Worker ants from nearby colonies will collect and remove the dead ants quickly. This helps prevent predators from being able to locate the colonies, which spend most of their time in nests beneath flat stones or similar hard spaces – such as sidewalks. Within a week after the swarms appear, they’re gone.

Pavement ants can be a nuisance if they get into your pantry. But when they’re swarming safely out on the sidewalk, they’re just a fascinating part of nature – one that most of us can observe without going more than a block or two from home.

I’m Mark Brunson, and I’m wild about Utah’s natural creatures, wherever they’re found.

Credits:

Images Courtesy & Copyright Lyle Bingham, Photographer, Bridgerland Audubon Society
Featured Audio: Courtesy & © Kevin Colver, https://wildstore.wildsanctuary.com/collections/special-collections and Anderson, Howe and Wakeman
Text: Mark Brunson, https://www.usu.edu/experts/profile/mark-brunson/
Additional Reading: Mark Brunson, https://www.usu.edu/experts/profile/mark-brunson/ & Lyle Bingham, Bridgerland Audubon Society

Additional Reading

Mark Brunson’s archive: https://wildaboututah.org/?s=brunson


Pavement Ants, Hillman Ball Park, Payson UT, After the Sprinklers
Courtesy & Copyright Lyle W. Bingham, Photographer

Tetramorium caespitum – Bugwoodwiki
https://wiki.bugwood.org/Tetramorium_caespitum

Tetramorium caespitum – iNaturalist
https://www.inaturalist.org/guide_taxa/832327

Immigrant Pavement Ant (Tetramorium immigrans) – iNaturalist
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/569552-Tetramorium-immigrans

Pavement Ant | NC State Extension Publications
https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/pavement-ant

“Pavement ants (Formicidae, Tetramorium immigrans) are northern Utah’s most common pest ant in and around homes and structures. Until recently, the pavement ant’s scientific name was Tetramorium caespitum, but recent genetic work has clarified that our common pest Tetramorium species in the U.S. is from Europe and has been given the name T. immigrans (Wagner et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2019). Genetic variation among pavement ant populations in the U.S. is low and it is believed that current populations were derived from one or a few closely related colonies from Europe introduced into the northeastern U.S. about 200 years ago (Wagner et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2019).”
Pavement Ants, Extension, Utah State University (USU), https://extension.usu.edu/planthealth/research/pavement-ants

When the Ants Come Marching In…, IPM Fact Sheet #8, USU Extension, Utah State University, https://extension.usu.edu/planthealth/schoolipm/files/pest-press-fact-sheets/pdf/ants_pestpress.pdf

Pavement Ant, Tetramorium caespitum | USU
https://extension.usu.edu/planthealth/ipm/notes_ag/hemp-pavement-ants

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Love nature? There’s an app for that

Painted Schinia, Schinia volupia, Courtesy & Copyright Mark Brunson
Painted Schinia
Schinia volupia
Courtesy & Copyright Mark Brunson
We hear a lot these days how people spend too much time with their electronic devices. The internet is full of advice on how to get kids away from their screens to enjoy nature, and that’s great. But for me, as someone who has always loved natural spaces, I’m finding that a screen can actually enhance my time outdoors.

My iPhone is packed with apps that help me connect to nature. One lets me identify birds by their song. Another recognizes constellations in the night sky. I’ve got several plant identification apps. But my favorite nature app is called iNaturalist. When I see a plant or animal in the wild, I can snap a photo, and the app’s artificial intelligence will help me identify what species I’m seeing. Then I can upload the photo and its GPS coordinates so others can see what I found and where I found it. In doing this, I help scientists learn where species are found and how common there are. And if the AI turns out to be wrong – which does happen – experts who use the app can tell me what they think I really saw.

I’m outdoors a lot, and I use iNaturalist a lot. It’s almost an obsession. But this obsession helps me learn to see nature in new ways. Here’s an example: Earlier this year, my wife and I were walking along a cattle trail near Canyonlands National Park. It was early May, and we were delighted to see wildflowers blooming in the desert. And of course, I took photos as we went. At one point, I happened to see a bright yellow, daisy- shaped flower with a red center. I knew it was a red dome blanketflower, closely related to the bright red and yellow Gaillardia plants that many Utahns grow in their waterwise gardens.

But when I knelt to take a closeup photo, I saw something I hadn’t noticed. Feeding on nectar from some of the flowers were small, brightly colored moths, their wings a deep red with white stripes in a pattern like a woven blanket, their heads a vivid orange. iNaturalist told me I’d found a group of painted schinia moths – a species I’d never encountered or even heard of before.

Intrigued, I wanted to know more. I learned there are at least five species of painted schinia moth in the U.S. Southwest, each of which feeds only on a particular kind of blanketflower. This sort of plant-insect specialization is common. It benefits the plants, because as moths move from flower to flower, they carry pollen with them, and a specialist pollinator won’t bring its pollen load to a species that can’t use it. And it benefits the insects. As they adapt to the unique chemical and physical features of their host plants, they can gather and use food most efficiently. And – as I learned when I had to look closely to even see my painted schinia moths – they can evolve to use camouflage to avoid predators.

Of course, the downside to specialization is that if something bad happens to the host plant, it also endangers their insect specialist. Luckily for the painted schinia moth, blanketflowers are abundant in late spring in the southeast Utah desert. That’s lucky for us humans, too, as we enjoy the brilliant color they bring to red rock country – even more so if we take time to kneel down, snap a photo, and examine them more closely.

I’m Mark Brunson, and I’m Wild About Utah.

Credits:

Images Courtesy & Copyright Mark Brunson, Photographer
Featured Audio: Courtesy & © Kevin Colver, https://wildstore.wildsanctuary.com/collections/special-collections
Text: Mark Brunson, https://www.usu.edu/experts/profile/mark-brunson/
Additional Reading: Mark Brunson, https://www.usu.edu/experts/profile/mark-brunson/ & Lyle Bingham, Bridgerland Audubon Society

Additional Reading

Mark Brunson’s archive: https://wildaboututah.org/?s=brunson

Loarie, Scott. The surprising power of your nature photos. TED talk, April 2025.
https://www.ted.com/talks/scott_loarie_the_surprising_power_of_your_nature_photos

Southwest Desert Flora. Gaillardia pinnatifida, Red Dome Blanketflower.
https://southwestdesertflora.com/WebsiteFolders/All_Species/Asteraceae/Gaillardia%20pinnatifida,%20Red%20Dome%20Blanketflower.html

Painted Schinia Moth, Schinia volupia, iNaturalist, https://www.inaturalist.org/guide_taxa/1565242
Photos of Painted Schinia Moth Schinia volupia, iNaturalist, https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/230575-Schinia-volupia/browse_photos