Just last week was the North American Ornithological Conference, a major gathering of ornithologists in Vancouver, British Columbia. Quite a few of our staff and scientists attended, and among them was Wes Hochachka, assistant director of our Bird Population Studies program. When last we heard from Wes, he was extolling the virtues of European warblers—but [...]
Science editor Gus Axelson recently posted about how the warblers of Europe don’t exactly measure up to our spectacular American warblers. That got the attention of Wesley Hochachka, assistant director of our Bird Population Studies program. Wes is an avid birder and has spent plenty of time in the field in both North America [...]
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 [...]
