 |
|
|
Evening Dinner Programs
|
SECRET LIVES OF GULF COAST BIRDS
by Bill Fontenot
Monday Evening
The U.S. Gulf Coast (or.....The northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico....) serves as an avian port of call, regularly attracting birds from both the eastern and western states, as well as the temperate and sub-tropical Americas. Join long-time Louisiana naturalist Bill Fontenot as he provides a year-round synopsis of Gulf Coast birdlife, focusing on little-known behaviors of trans-gulf and circum-gulf neotropical migrants, and overwintering nearctic species, along with year round/nesting species such as herons, egrets, gulls, and terns.
Since 1986 Bill Fontenot has dedicated his career in biology to restoring the ecological integrity in lands, from the smallest urban gardens to the largest wildlife management areas and is currently the manager of the Acadiana Park Nature Center. In 2001, Fontenot was honored in receiving the Louisiana Wildlife Federation’s Professional Conservationist of the Year award. As a professional naturalist, he has led thousands of guided tours, and has lectured at dozens of universities, botanic gardens, arboreta, and other research institutions from Austin to Atlanta and north to New York. He serves as a member of the Louisiana Ornithological Society’s Louisiana Bird Records Committee, and is currently serving as president of that organization. He has published over 1,000 natural history-related articles in various newspapers, magazines, and scientific journals, and has authored/coauthored 4 books: Native Gardening in the South (1992), A Cajun Prairie Restoration Chronicle (1995), Gulf Coast Birds (2001), and Louisiana Birdwatching (2004).
THE BIRDS AND THE HURRICANES
by Peter Yaukey
Tuesday Evening
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita slammed into the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts in August and September of 2005, with high wind that downed numerous trees and storm surge that inundated vast areas along the state’s coast. In New Orleans, Katrina’s effects were amplified by the floodwaters being trapped within the levee protection system, prolonging the flood for weeks, and causing a drastic reduction in the human population for many months. This talk will track and discuss the dramatic consequences of these events for the bird populations of south Louisiana, using a combination of urban bird census and reproductive data from before and after Katrina in New Orleans, and Christmas Bird Count data from across the Gulf region.
Peter Yaukey is Associate Professor and Chair of the Geography Department at the University of New Orleans, and a New Orleans resident of 15 years. His research has focused on bird migration and habitat use in the context of urban environments. He has been an avid birder for over 30 years, since his childhood in Massachusetts.
PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
by Richard Crossley
Thursday Evening
A story of past lessons learned from days growing up in the wild British birding scene, from travels around the world to living in Cape May. Told in a Yorkshire brogue through a Camera lens that loves color and art. But what of birding in the future – perhaps this will change your thoughts!
Richard Crossley is an Englishman who traveled the world studying birds
but fell in love with flight identification of warblers in Cape May, the place
he now calls home. He became seriously obsessed with bird photography
while co-authoring The Shorebird Guide published in Spring 2006. His
background gives him a unique perspective of the World and Birds.
ROGER TORY PETERSON—A BIRD ARTIST’S LIFE
by Douglas Carlson
Friday Evening
A biographical examination of Peterson’s painting, both his field
guide art and what he called “gallery” painting. Peterson’s life was his
work; his life story, then, is revealed clearly through the development
of his art. Samples of his work and excerpts from his correspondence
will illustrate the various phases of his career.
After thirty-five years of teaching, finishing up as writer-in-residence at
Concordia College (Moorhead, MN), Douglas Carlson retired to write
fulltime. An early result is a biography of Roger Tory Peterson, Roger
Tory Peterson ~ Living in Two Worlds to be published by the University
of Texas Press in fall, 2007. Over the years, Carlson’s essays on natural
and cultural history have been published in numerous magazines and
journals and have been collected into two books: At the Edge (White
Pine Press) and When We Say We’re Home (University of Utah Press).
He recently accepted an editorial position for spring, 2007 at The
Georgia Review in Athens, Georgia.
PROGRAMS & WORKSHOPS
Three workshops are being offered. You have the opportunity to attend all three, as all three will be presented at 8:30 AM and 1:00 PM on Wednesday and 8:30 AM on Friday.
TECHNOLOGY IN BIRDING
by Brian Sullivan
Here is your chance to get hands-on experience with gadgets such as GPS Units, Ipods, and the National Geographic Handheld Birds field guide; to learn about useful web sites such as BNA, Ebird, SORA, Cornell’s All About Birds, Surfbirds, and others of interest to birders. Did you know there are updates available for your Sibley Guide to Birds? What is Avibase? Software useful in listing and learning will also be discussed.
Brian Sullivan has conducted fieldwork on birds across North America for the past thirteen years. Birding travels, photography and field projects have taken him to Central and South America, to the Arctic and across North America. He has written and consulted on various books, popular literature, and scientific literature on North American birds. Research interests include migration ecology, conservation biology, seabirds, raptor migration and bird identification. He is currently Project Leader for eBird (www.ebird.org) and photographic editor for the Birds of North America Online (http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/BNA/) at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and is photographic editor of the ABA publication North American Birds. He currently lives in Monterey, California.
THE SIGHTS AND SOUNDS OF MIGRATION: A HOW-TO FOR IDENTIFYING FLIGHT-CALLS AND FOR INTERPRETING RADAR IMAGERY
by Andrew Farnsworth
Migration is, at least in northern temperate latitudes, a twice-yearly spectacle with which many of us are well-acquainted and that many of us hold in awe. During peak migration periods literally tens of millions of birds may be aloft at once. However, we may not often appreciate the shear magnitude of these events because many of them occur under cover of darkness. In this workshop we’ll focus on two exciting ways to study migration and to experience migration from a broad and new perspective: listening to flight-calls of passing migrants and interpreting radar imagery of bird migration as displayed on WSR-88D images. We will listen to a variety of pre-recorded flight-calls (both published and unpublished recordings), focusing on how to listen to these ephemeral notes and methods to distinguish them. We’ll also examine radar images from across the United States, learning to interpret direction and speed of migration, weather conditions associated with migration, and geographic locations where migration is occurring. Hopefully, conditions will be favorable during the workshop for examining live radar images. The topics we cover will range from the most fundamental aspects of understanding migratory patterns and listening to sounds, to advanced topics such as predicting fallouts and separating difficult to identify “zeep” notes.
Andrew Farnsworth developed a keen interest in birds at a young age. By age five he was birding around his home in Rye, New York, and since that age Andrew has maintained a passion for bird migration. He followed this passion through an undergraduate, a masters, and a doctoral degree. He received his B.S. in natural resources from Cornell University in 1995; it was in Ithaca where Andrew first caught the fire of actually studying nocturnal migration, as a result of Bill Evans, the pioneer of flight-call identification. After several years of field work, Andrew returned to school to receive his M.S. in zoology from Clemson University in 2001, using surveillance radar and acoustic sensors to study nocturnal bird migration for his thesis research under Dr. Sidney Gauthreaux; and eventually his Ph. D. from Cornell University in 2006, using an array of novel acoustic and phylogenetic analysis methods to study flight-calls of North American warblers under Dr. John Fitzpatrick. At present, Andrew and his wife Patricia live in New York, New York.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BIRD IDENTIFICATION
by David Sibley
Bird identification is the central challenge of birding, and we all strive to improve our skills and to identify more birds, more quickly and more accurately. Countless references and tools suggest that the birder who wants to avoid misidentifications should learn more about the fine points of plumage, molt, variation and subspecies, etc. But the fact is that most mistakes involve glitches in perception. No amount of preparation can prevent us from blurting out “Snowy Owl!” when the time is right and we see a white milk jug on the salt-marsh. Our brains, and the very short-cuts that we use successfully (most of the time) to identify birds, are also the source of most misidentifications. This workshop will focus on the psychological aspects of bird identification - how we subconsciously use pattern-recognition, expectations, suggestion, and other clues - and how those methods can lead us to misidentify birds with complete confidence.
David Sibley started drawing birds at the age of five and keeping a life list at the age of seven, and never looked back. His early interest in birding was encouraged by his father - ornithologist Fred Sibley. After high school he attended Cornell University for one year before leaving to pursue his passion for birding and art. After a few years of working off and on at Cornell’s Library of Natural Sounds and at the Cape May Bird Observatory in New Jersey, he started traveling full time in an effort to get to know all the birds of North America. Living in a camper van and leading a few birdwatching tours, he spent the years from 1982 to 1992 criss-crossing the continent watching and sketching. In 1993 the idea he had been working on for a new and comprehensive North American field guide finally took shape, and since then his days have been spent primarily in the studio - painting and writing to produce the Sibley Guide to Birds (published in 2000) the Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior (published in 2001) Sibley’s Birding Basics (published in 2002), and his most recent books, the Sibley Guide to Birds East and the Sibley Guide to Birds West, both published in May 2003. David lives in Concord Massachusetts, with his wife and two sons, where he continues to study and illustrate birds and the natural world. You can see more of his work at www.sibleyguides.com.
SPECIAL MEETINGS & PROGRAMS
THE SECRETS OF DIGISCOPING REVEALED
by Clay Taylor
Come prepared to be “wowed” by the results of top notch digiscoping. There will be a discussion of equipment, techniques, strategies, and everything you have always wanted to know about this fascinating new method of photographing birds and other wildlife. Samples of work that Clay Taylor has done will be examined and will be analyzed for techniques that you can use in the field. Please note: A special, Saturday only, field trip is being offered so you can put your new ideas into practice.
Clay Taylor is the Naturalist Market Manager for Swarovski Optik N.A. He was the founder of the Rochester (NY) Hawk Banding Project and founding President of the Connecticut Butterfly Association. Clay has also served as President of the Mattabeseck Audubon Society in Middletown, Connecticut, and was a member of the Connecticut Rare Records Committee, Connecticut Ornithological Society. He conducted the world’s first Digiscoping Big Day (photographing 89 species) during New Jersey Audubon Society’s 2005 World Series of Birding. When the Digi Big Day category was officially added to the event in 2006, his Swarovski Digiscoping Hawks team won with a total of 124 bird species identifiably photographed.
A DUAL PRESENTATION HIGHLIGHTING LOUISIANA’S NATURAL AREAS
by Nancy Camel
Lake Martin is the ‘heartbeat” of Cypress Island Preserve, a 9,200-acre bird sanctuary and cypress swamp located just east of Lafayette, that provides easy access to premiere wildlife viewing. Using photographs from her recently published book The Nature of Things at Lake Martin, Nancy Camel’s presentation will cover the Lay of the Land, The Birds, The Environment and The People of this unique nature preserve. During the spring nesting season, Lake Martin is home to thousands of pairs of colorful wading birds and is an important habitat for migratory birds. Throughout the year there are more than 200 species of resident, migratory and wintering birds; 1,200-1,800 alligators; and wildflowers, butterflies, dragonflies, frogs, snakes, turtles, squirrels, beavers, nutria and otters. Based on six years of personal observation, interviews, research and photographs, the book provides an insight into the behavior of wading birds and the challenges faced by natural places in South Louisiana.
Nancy Camel changed careers at mid-life to “follow her bliss” and become a full-time, professional nature photographer and writer. She has photographed extensively in South Louisiana and in the fours corners of North America since retiring as Executive Director of the Safety Council in 1999. Her work has appeared in National Wildlife Magazine, Outdoor Photographer, Audubon Calendars, Wetlands International and various other local and national publications. A resident of Baton Rouge, Nancy is a graduate of LSU in journalism and a member of various state and national photography organizations, including the Louisiana Photographic Society. Nancy studied with various professional nature photographers through the Rocky Mountain School of Photography and with Arthur Morris, one of the world’s foremost bird photographers. She is author of The Nature of Things at Lake Martin which was published in April 2006. Lake Martin is the “heartbeat” of Cypress Island Preserve; a premiere birding area located about five miles east of Lafayette. The book is about the history, the birds, the people and the environment of Lake Martin and Cypress Island Preserve documented over a six year period.
BIRD-FOCUSED CONSERVATION IN LOUISIANA: AN UNFINISHED AGENDA
by Keith Ouchley, Ph.D., Executive Director LNC
The official list of Louisiana birds stands at 459 species, which positions Louisiana in the upper quartile for bird species richness in the U.S. Given that Louisiana only ranks 31st in total area (51,840 sq mi, 134,264 sq km) this relatively high species total is even more impressive. Although topographic variation is minimal (highest point is 535 feet above sea level) there is significant habitat diversity within Louisiana, ranging from coastal marshes to forested wetlands, to longleaf pine savannas, to upland pine and hardwood forests, and it is this wide variety of habitats that has resulted in such diverse bird communities. I will briefly discuss the major habitats of Louisiana, the characteristic birds found in those habitats and some of the rare and more charismatic species most sought after by birders.
In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt declared the barrier islands in southeast Louisiana the Nation’s second national wildlife refuge in an effort to protect the large colonies of nesting water birds. Since the establishment of Breton National Wildlife Refuge, birds have been a major focus of conservation actions in this state. I will describe some of the most significant bird-focused conservation initiatives that The Nature Conservancy and partners have successfully completed, and will also identify several important conservation projects that are needed if we are to successfully conserve Louisiana’s avian biodiversity
Dr. Ouchley is a native of Louisiana and has been involved in conservation through various forms throughout his life. He holds a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in Biology from the University of Louisiana, Monroe and a Ph.D. in Wildlife Ecology from LSU. He has been an active researcher throughout most of his career studying ecological interactions of animals and their habitats and is the author of numerous scientific publications. He is a past recipient of the Partners in Flight National Researcher of the Year Award for his work with neotropical migratory birds in the Lower Mississippi Valley and was named Alumnus of the Year for the LSU School of Natural Resources in 2001. He serves as an Adjunct Professor in the School of Natural Resources at LSU and the Department of Biology at the University of Louisiana, Monroe. He has been a member of The Nature Conservancy since 1987 and began work with the Louisiana Chapter in 1999 as the Director of Protection. He assumed the role of Executive Director in May, 2000.
BIRDERS’ EXCHANGE SPECIAL PRESENTATION
Birder’s Exchange will feature Xicotencatl Vega Picos, Director of Conservation in Sinaloa, Mexico, for Pronatura Noroeste Mar de Cortes, and Associate Professor of Ecology and Sustainable Development at ITESM Campus Sinaloa. He has been instrumental in promoting conservation and research interest in shorebirds in Mexico, and his work has impacts as far away as the US, Canada, Panama and Spain.
Birders’ Exchange (BEX) collects used and new birding equipment and redistributes it, free of charge, to researchers, conservationists and educators working to conserve birds and their habitats across the hemisphere, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean. Since its inception in 1990, Birders’ Exchange has served more than 500 groups in 30 countries. In the past two years, equipment has been supplied to more than three dozen Latin American and Caribbean programs in: Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, The Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Trinidad, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
EAST COAST SHOREBIRDS: AN INSTITUTE FOR FIELD ORNITHOLOGY (IFO) MINI-WORKSHOP
The IFO Program got its start at the University of Maine at Machias in 1984. Since then, dozens of IFO workshops have been offered at various localities in both North and Latin America. In 2000 the American Birding Association (ABA) assumed responsibility for the IFO Program and it now is the ABA’s flagship adult education program. One of the seminal and longest running IFO workshops is East Coast Shorebirds.
In this mini-workshop, veteran IFO instructor Wayne Petersen, will present a lesson segment that is part of his regular, weeklong East Coast Shorebirds IFO curriculum. The theme of the mini-workshop will be a discussion about how to age shorebirds in the field, along with information about the process of molt and plumage acquisition in shorebirds. These topics will offer information that is useful for birders trying to identify shorebirds in the field, as well as those interested in censusing shorebirds as part of coordinated volunteer research efforts. As with all IFO workshops, education will be the central theme in this mini-workshop
GENERAL MEMBERSHIP MEETING
Friday 27 April at 3:30 PM
ABA’s General Membership Meeting is an opportunity for you to hear reports from board members and ask questions of board and staff. ABA Chair, Bettie Harriman, presiding.
Preliminary Agenda
(agenda subject to change)
• Welcome: Introduction to Board and Staff
• Election of new board members
• New business
• Finances
• Questions from the floor
• Overview of 2007 (programs, achievements, etc.)
SOCIALS
Socials with cash bars will be held each afternoon in the exhibit area of the hotel prior to dinner. On Friday, an authors’ book signing will be held following the General Membership Meeting. |
| |
|
|
|
