Red Crossbills range all over North America’s western mountains and northern forests, filling the air with their brief, metallic chips and attacking pine, fir, and hemlock cones with their unique bills. But there’s a growing realization that this species consists of a whole group of distinct types—some of them possibly even full species. Plumages don’t [...]
What does the future of conservation look like? According to Wesley Hochachka, it looks fast and young. We last heard from Wes on the island of Helgoland, and before that in Brazil, but this week he’s at a conference at the American Museum of Natural History. Here’s Wes with his impressions: Sure, I know that [...]
A few weeks ago, Wesley Hochachka was at the International Ornithological Congress in Brazil, learning about using satellites to do fieldwork more economically. Now he’s on an island in the North Sea called Helgoland, just off Germany and Denmark. Like places such as Cape May, New Jersey, the barrier islands of the northern Gulf of [...]
I’ll admit it, satellites boggle my mind. Even though I’m quite happy to listen to my phone tell me where to find the best Caribbean restaurant in Albany, I still can’t quite believe that our species has built machines that fly around our planet and tell us what they see. But the truth is that [...]
Several of our staff are spending the week in Brazil, at the 25th International Ornithological Congress. Kind of like a larger, more global AOU meeting, these conferences began in 1884 and are held every four years. Here’s an update from Dr. Martjan Lammertink, a research associate at the Cornell Lab, an expert on the world’s [...]
Living Bird editor Tim Gallagher took a short break from the AOU meeting last week to visit the San Diego Natural History Museum. He’s trying to piece together what happened to the majestic Imperial Woodpecker, a bird of Mexico’s high pine forests that has not been seen since 1956. The museum had two specimens of [...]
On paper, last week’s AOU meetings were a solid wall of plenary talks, 15-minute research talks, and evening poster sessions. But cracks in the full schedule—coffee breaks, field trips, dinners and drinks—left plenty of room for impromptu conversations and unscheduled idea-sharing. Dr. Alan Poole, editor of the Birds of North America Online, ran across two [...]
It’s time for another annual meeting of the American Ornithologists’ Union. Just like last year in Philadelphia and 2009 in Portland, we’ll be bringing you stories from the floor of the meeting, where hundreds of ornithologists have gathered for four days of intense science. First up is Living Bird editor Tim Gallagher to report on [...]
