January 2020 Newsletter
Dear Members of the Chairman’s Council,
Greetings from Sapsucker Woods!
Happy New Year from all of us at the Lab of Ornithology.
This week you will receive a mailing from me that include trip itineraries for the fall 2020 Birds and Wine trip, the 2021 Chairman’s Council trips, and the 2020 Golden-wing Society trips. All of the trips are listed below with the appropriate dates. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or concerns regarding a trip.
Upcoming Trips and Events:
May 31 – June 6, 2020 – GWS trip to the Cascade Mountains in Washington State (erik@ventbird.com or 512-328-5221)
June 18 – 20, 2020 – Weekend at Sapsucker Woods
July 13 – 19, 2020 – GWS trip to Chiricahua Mountains in Arizona (erik@ventbird.com or 512-328-5221)
October 11 – 16, 2020 – Chairman’s Council Trip to California for Birds and Wine (RockJumper: 888-990-5552 or conservationtours@rockjumperbirding.com)
October 18 – 22, 2020 – Little St. Simons Island (please contact Shana Love, LSSI’s group sales representative, at 912-634-5382, or toll-free at 1-888-733-5774)
February 24 – 28, 2021 – South Texas: The Rio Grande Valley (erik@ventbird.com or 512-328-5221)
October 14 – 25, 2021 – Brazil: Pantanal Safari (erik@ventbird.com or 512-328-5221)
Please visit the Chairman’s Council website for more events.
Recent News from Around the Lab
After more than a year of exhaustive negotiations, programming, merging, and editing, we are on the cusp of releasing a major new online publication called Birds of the World (BOW). BOW is “one of the most exciting projects that we’ve worked on in my 25 years at the Lab,” says John Fitzpatrick, and is “broader and deeper than anything the Cornell Lab has ever published.” It brings together scholarly content from four celebrated works of ornithology and is a one-stop shop for comprehensive, authoritative information. The website will feature 10,721 species accounts and is integrated with millions of bird records from eBird and multimedia (photos, videos, sound recordings) from the Macaulay Library.
BOW is scheduled for release in late February, but we invite you to examine the site before it launches. Please visit the website and let us know what you think (use the “Send Feedback” link at top of the website page).
The new Project FeederWatch app is available for your bird counts. The app can be found in both the Apple Store and Google Play. For more information on Project FeederWatch, or the app, please visit their website.
More updates and information from the Lab can be found on the Chairman’s Council website, or you can contact me directly (melissa.walker@cornell.edu or 607-254-2118).
For other news around the Lab, please see our recent staff newsletter: The CLUE.
A Year in Review of Macaulay Library and eBird
The Macaulay Library marked its 90th year of archiving natural sounds in 2019. From the first recording of a wild bird in North America on May 18, 1929 to today, our goal has always been to preserve the sounds of our world for everyone to hear. In 2019, 7,243 recordists contributed more than 180,000 recordings of 6,607 species and 47,008 photographers added more than 5.5 million photos of 9,747 species. The Macaulay Library now holds more than 600,000 recordings of 10,957 species, 9,081 of which are recordings of birds and more than 15 million photos of 10,211 bird species.
2019 was a milestone year for eBird, delivering a new era of scientific and conservation applications, innovative new birding tools, and much more. There are now more than 500,000 eBirders who have contributed sightings from out their windows, on the way to work, or at visits to parks, ponds, and fields. eBirders have collected more than 737 million bird observations, continuing to make eBird the world’s largest biodiversity-related citizen science project.
For impact stories, please visit the Chairman’s Council website and the Lab of Ornithology website.
Your personal contacts at the Lab:
A Lab staff listing is available on the the Lab of Ornithology website.
Melissa Walker, Program Coordinator
607-254-2118 or melissa.walker@cornell.edu
Mary Guthrie, Director of Major Gifts
607-254-2157 or msg21@cornell.edu
Thank you for everything you do to support the Lab, birds, and conservation. We so appreciate your commitment to our mission.
We hope to see you on a trip or at an upcoming event!
Best regards,
Melissa