May 2019 Newsletter

Dear Members of the Chairman’s Council,

Greetings from Sapsucker Woods!

Save the date: in collaboration with RockJumper, we are offering an Autumn Birds and Wine trip in California. The dates for this trip are October 11-16, 2020. I will send the full itinerary this summer – please let me know if you are interested in this trip! Space is still available, if you would like to attend the 2019 Cape May trip. A link to this trip is listed below.

As always, please let us know if you are interested in visiting the Lab – we would love to arrange a personal tour!

Upcoming Trips and Events:

September 25-29, 2019 – Chairman’s Council Trip to Cape May, NJ

October 2019 – Little St. Simons Island

October 9-19, 2019 – Galapagos

January 23 – February 2, 2020 – Chairman’s Council Trip to the Amazon (trip is sold out)

October 11-16, 2020 – Chairman’s Council Trip to California for Birds and Wine

Spring 2021 – Chairman’s Council Trip to Costa Rica

Recent News from Around the Lab

Recently, we soft-launched Merlin Bird ID for the Web. The goal of Merlin Web is to expand the reach of Merlin Bird ID and help All About Birds users identify birds. At present, the Web version covers about 650 North American species and uses the exact same descriptive text, photos, sounds, and maps that the app contains. Merlin is available from every page on All About Birds—look for buttons in the header at the top right of each page, as well as in the Search box, and in the Similar Species section on the species guide pages.

From May 18 – May 26, Macaulay Library hosted a snapshot of sound event to celebrate the first recording of wild birds in North American in 1929. The goal of this event is to encourage people to record bird songs and call from around the world. At the end of the event staff will prepare a snapshot of sound from birds around the world during this time period, and a map highlighting each location where a snapshot was submitted. Here’s a link to a video Kathi Borgmann made about the event on Facebook. You can also see more posts in our Macaulay Library Facebook feed.

Macaulay Library is also hosting a 90 for 90 Challenge April 1 – October 31 this year. This event is encouraging recordists to submit 90 recordings for Macaulay Library’s 90th Anniversary.

Impact Statement

Each month, we are pleased to share how your annual gifts are making a real impact.

In September 2018, a workshop on “Bioacoustics in Conservation” at the Student Conference on Conservation Science in Bengaluru, India demonstrated the “ripple effect” of the Lab’s investment in building local capacity for applied and basic scientific research and conservation around the world.

Twice a year, the Lab’s Bioacoustics Research Program (BRP) offers training workshops at the Lab for scientists in techniques for studying animal sounds. Since October 2017, BRP has offered scholarships for students and scientists from developing countries to attend the workshop. The primary goal of the scholarship program is to build capacity for scientists in developing countries to apply modern bioacoustic methods to pressing challenges in wildlife conservation, as well as to basic ecological and taxonomic research in regions of high biodiversity. Without scholarship assistance, most scientists in these countries could not afford the cost of traveling to Ithaca to participate in the workshops, which also provide opportunities to network with other researchers and to establish international collaborations.

The September workshop in Bengaluru was organized and hosted by KV Gururaja (“Guru”), an Indian biology professor and frog researcher, who attended BRP’s Sound Analysis Workshop as a scholarship recipient in April 2018. The Bengaluru workshop, attended by 36 participants, featured presentations by Guru based on what he had learned in BRP’s workshop. Guru’s travel to Ithaca and participation in the April workshop were made possible by unrestricted gifts to the Lab and by a targeted gift from Ecological Associates, Inc.

Guru and his students work in the Western Ghats, a mountain range in India that is one of the world’s leading biodiversity hotspots. Thanks to your support of the Lab, Indian scientists now have some new and sharper tools available to advance the work of understanding and protecting wildlife there.

The picture above is a group photo of the April 2018 SAW class.

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 April staff newsletter (The CLUE).

Your personal contacts at the Lab:

A Lab staff listing is available on the Chairman’s Council website.

Mary Guthrie, Director of Major Gifts
607-254-2157 or msg21@cornell.edu

Melissa Walker, Program Coordinator
607-254-2118 or melissa.walker@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 at an upcoming event or trip!

Best regards,

Melissa