Kaia Hilgendorf-Roost, Owl Bander

Minnesota born and raised, Kaia graduated from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities in 2024 and received her degree in Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology. While at the U, she spent three years banding songbirds at Carpenter Nature Center, and spent three summers nest monitoring shorebirds, common eider, and other tundra nesting birds in the remote Alaskan Arctic. Since college, Kaia has worked on the Goshute Mountain with HawkWatch International, counting and banding raptors, in North Carolina songbird banding, at Hawk Ridge as a Banding Apprentice, and at the Palomarin Field Station in CA as a songbird banding apprentice. She is looking forward to many board and card games played in the owl blind – she will never say no to a challenge at a cribbage hand. In her free time, she enjoys cross-country skiing, biking, running, paddling, camping and just getting outdoors in general!