When the gavel fell last week at the auction of John James Audubon’s “The Birds of America” the price for the rare first edition was almost $8 million—the third highest sum ever paid at auction for a book. But what a book! Its phenomenal size and heft simply doesn’t come through in photos, but the 435 [...]
Scientists working in Haiti have obtained the first-ever photos of an endangered Black-capped Petrel chick—a little ball of gray fluff that was discovered at its nest inside a mountaintop cave. The finding helps answer questions about this secretive species’ life cycle. These crow-sized seabirds nest only in the Caribbean and feed as far away as [...]
The Cornell Lab’s Celebrate Urban Birds project will host an Arts and Nature Workshop in Ithaca, New York on February 1–2, 2012. We’re awarding a limited number of travel scholarships to attend. The workshop will be bilingual (English and Spanish), and project leader Karen Purcell encourages Latino and other underserved youth to apply. “We are [...]
As you’re making your lists and checking them twice, consider holiday gifts that give twice—thoughtful gifts that are fun to receive and also help birds by supporting conservation, research, and education here at the Cornell Lab. We’ve put together a varied list of gift suggestions—from apps on your phone to trips into the field—that will delight [...]
If a half-ounce songbird can visit eastern North America’s woods and Mexico’s tropical forests in a single year, why shouldn’t the students who study them—at least virtually? The Cornell Lab’s director of education, Nancy Trautmann, just returned from a visit to Mexico where teachers laid the groundwork for having students from both countries share what [...]
An art project memorializing five extinct species has been made into a feature-length film that will be shown in New York City on Friday, Dec. 2, 2011. The Lost Bird Project consists of five sleek bronze sculptures, each as tall as a person. Conceived and created by Todd McGrain, a sculptor and Cornell University art [...]
Our 2011 Parade of Students consisted of 53 research projects in 53 minutes—a breakneck tour through student research here at the Cornell Lab. We do it every two years for the benefit of our Board of Directors, and this time we invite you to watch, too. Last Friday, as all 53 students assembled in an [...]
It’s not every day you get a chance to look back in time at a bird that probably no longer exists. But Cornell Lab of Ornithology scientists were able to do that with the spectacular Imperial Woodpecker of Mexico, when researcher Martjan Lammertink tracked down the only known film footage ever taken of this raven-sized [...]
Just a day after the news of Machi the Whimbrel’s shooting by hunters on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe (see previous post) comes the report that a second satellite-tracked bird also died in the same hunting area on the island. The second Whimbrel’s name was Goshen, a female that had been tracked since August 2010 [...]
