Upcoming Programs

We are pleased to announce that Nuttall monthly meetings are back in person at Harvard.

Daniel T. Ksepka--Penguins, Past and Present

April 1, 2024

Curator at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT

Penguins evolved more than 60 million years ago. The rich fossil record of these birds has revealed unexpected forms such as giant (300lb+) penguins, spear-billed penguins, and penguins with red and grey feathers. These fossils provide a window into how penguins adapted to changing environmental conditions such as drifting continents, reorganization of Southern Ocean currents, and the onset of glacial-interglacial cycles. Increasingly, scientists are combining fossil data with observations from living penguins to gain a synthetic understanding of penguin evolution. In 2022, the complete genomes of all living penguins were sequenced and calibrated with dates from fossils, providing once unimaginable insight into species boundaries, aquatic adaptations to everything from vision to metabolism, and population expansions and crashes during the last Ice Age.

Dr. Daniel T. Ksepka is a Curator at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT and also holds Research Associate positions at the American Museum of Natural History and the Field Museum of Natural History. Dr. Ksepka earned his BS from Rutgers University and a PhD from Columbia University. He has published over 70 peer-reviewed research articles as well as numerous popular articles for venues such as Scientific American and American Scientist. His research focuses on avian phylogeny and anatomy, with a special interest in penguins. Dr. Ksepka has collected penguin fossils in Peru and New Zealand, named 11 extinct penguins species including the 340lb giant penguin Kumimanu fordycei, and participated in the recent sequencing of the complete genomes of all 19 living penguin species.

 

Allison J. Shultz--Flashy feathers to microscopic mechanisms: How and why birds are colorful

May 6, 2024

Associate Curator, Ornithology, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Join Associate Curator of Ornithology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County as she delves into the world of feathers and their colors. During her talk, she will discuss why color needs to be studied from a bird's perspective rather a human one, and how different forces have shaped the multitude of colors and patterns that we observe today (including some that humans can't see!). She will end her talk by describing some of her current work on the mechanisms underlying the great diversity of colors in birds.

Dr. Allison Shultz is Associate Curator of the Ornithology Department at NHMLAC. With her research, she seeks to understand the evolution of bird diversity, focusing on two major areas: how birds are responding to human-caused environmental changes, and how and why bird colors evolve. Dr. Shultz received her PhD from Harvard University, MS from San Diego State University, and BA from the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to her research, Dr. Shultz is passionate about increasing diversity, inclusion, access, and equity in the sciences, and inspiring a love of nature in everyone.

 

 

Martin Wikelski--ICARUS – A new global IoT system for tracking movements of small migratory birds

June 3, 2024

Director, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior

The collective wisdom of the Earth´s animals provides an immense bio-treasure of unprecedented information for humankind. Learning from animals in the ´Internet of Animals´ can help us predict natural catastrophes, forecast global zoonotic disease spreads or safeguard food resources while monitoring in situ every corner of the planet. The evolved senses of animals as well as technical sensors on animal-borne tracking tags enables local earth observations at highest spatial and temporal resolution. To protect and understand the ecosystem services provided by animals, we need to monitor individual animals seamlessly on a global scale. At the same time, these unprecedented life-history data of individual wild animals provide deep, novel insight into fundamental biological processes.

The ICARUS initiative, an international bottom-up, science-driven technology development of small, cheap and autonomous IoT (Internet of Things) sensing devices for animal movement and behavior is aiming towards this: wearables for wildlife. The resulting big data available in the open-source data base Movebank help understand, monitor, predict and protect life on our planet.

Martin Wikelski is the Director of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (formerly Ornithology) in Radolfzell (Germany), Professor in Biology at the University of Konstanz and member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. Previously, he held positions at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA; Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Princeton University. His specialization is the study of global animal movement.

 

 

 

Past Programs

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Kim Peters – How Airfields in the Northeast Can Provide Benefits to Grassland Birds, Maintain Aircraft Safety and Support Broad-scale Conservation for Declining Species

January 5, 2015

Species associated with grasslands and other open spaces represent one of the most imperiled and rapidly declining groups of birds in North America.  The Northeastern U.S. is increasingly being recognized as an important source of breeding habitat.  For grasshopper sparrows, upland sandpipers, and eastern meadowlarks, airfields provide the some of the largest breeding sites in…

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Jeff Gordon – How Birding Can Save Your Life and Maybe, Just Maybe, Save the World

December 1, 2014

Alvaro Jaramillo has said that if golf is a good walk spoiled, then birding is a good walk perfected.  It’s such a simple, compelling, positive message.  But that positivity is something that birders as a community have relatively rarely managed to convey.  Why is it that with as great a “product” to sell as the…

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Shiloh Schulte – Arctic Shorebirds of Coats Island, Canada

November 3, 2014

Each year tiny Semipalmated Sandpipers and their larger relatives make a tremendously difficult trip from their South American wintering grounds to their breeding territories in the Arctic.  In recent years the eastern population of Semipalmated Sandpipers has declined sharply and  Manomet scientists set out to discover why.  Traveling to a remote field camp on Coats…

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Jennifer Mortensen – The White-Breasted Thrasher: An Endangered, Cooperative Breeder

October 6, 2014

The White-breasted Thrasher, described as a “very rare bird” by James Bond in 1928, continues to be rare today.  We have been studying White-breasted Thrasher demography and cooperative behavior at the stronghold of its Saint Lucian distribution, the site of recent, significant habitat loss.  Here I will present on the species’ natural history, our ongoing…

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Andrew Vitz – Why are Songbirds so Hard to Locate in Midsummer: An Examination of the Post-fledging Period

June 2, 2014

Andrew Vitz, who is from Cincinnati, Ohio, earned a BS from the University of Wisconsin and his MS and PhD from Ohio State University, studying the post-fledging ecology of forest songbirds. Dr Vitz worked four years as an avian ecologist for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pennsylvania before being appointed Massachusetts State Ornithologist…

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Robert M. Zink – Sisyphean Evolution in Darwin’s Finches

May 5, 2014

Robert M. Zink, leading scholar in avian evolution, holds the Breckenridge Chair in Ornithology and has served as Curator of Birds at the Bell Museum of Natural History and as Professor of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior at the University of Minnesota. Dr Zink earned his BS at University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, in 1977 and his…

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Mia Revels – Natural History of the Swainson’s Warbler

April 7, 2014

Dr. Mia Revels, an associate professor of biology at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, has risen to the challenge of assessing the status of Swainson’s Warbler in Oklahoma. Revels’ was an undergraduate at Northeastern State and received her degree in natural sciences and science education. She then earned a Master of Science in natural…

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Robert McCracken Peck – Audubon in the West

March 3, 2014

Robert McCracken Peck, Senior Fellow of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, is a writer, naturalist and historian who has traveled extensively in North and South America, Africa, Asia and Europe. He served as Special Assistant to the Academy’s President and Director of the Academy’s Natural History Museum before being named Fellow of the…

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Diego Calderón-Franco – Colombia: A Plethora of Birds New to Science

February 3, 2014

Diego Calderón-Franco was born in Medellín, Colombia and studied biology at the Universidad de Antioquia. He has been involved in exploring poorly-known, remote areas in the Neotropics with an emphasis on Colombia. He has been active in central Andes exploration and bird survey work, several audio recording projects, and research on manakin display behavior in…

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Gerrit Vyn – Chasing a Unicorn: Expeditions to Capture the First Comprehensive Media of the Spoon-billed Sandpiper

January 6, 2014

Also see: supplementary video Gerrit Vyn is a Seattle-based photographer deeply committed to conservation and connecting people more intimately with the myriad creatures sharing this miraculous and fragile planet. His work often focuses on birds because they are powerful and visible indicators of environmental health and change. Gerrit’s images have been used by most major…

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Carol R. Foss, PhD – The Rusty Blackbird: Elusive Denizen of Northern Wetlands

December 2, 2013

Carol Foss, Director of Conservation at Audubon Society of New Hampshire, holds a B.A. in Biology from Colby College, a M.S. in Zoology from the University of Connecticut, and a Ph.D. in Wildlife Ecology from the University of Maine. Carol has served NH Audubon in a variety of capacities for more than 30 years, beginning…

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Fletcher Smith – Satellite Tracking and Full Life-cycle Ecology of the Whimbrel

November 4, 2013

Fletcher Smith, research biologist at The Center for Conservation Biology, William and Mary College , Virginia, works with a diversity of bird species throughout the western hemisphere, following migrants from their breeding to winter grounds. His current research projects include work with Whimbrels, Red Knots, marsh sparrows and neotropical migrants. In addition, he conducts breeding…

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Rick Wright – Biodiversity: A Good Thing, Apparently

October 7, 2013

A Nebraskan by birth, Rick Wright attended University of Nebraska in the late 1970s. While in college he served as assistant to Paul A. Johnsgard; Rick was given the job of reorganizing the bird skin collection at the university museum. In 1983 Rick enrolled at Harvard Law School briefly, and then embarked on a graduate…

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Marja Bakermans – Breeding Bird Response to Forest Management: Developing Guidelines for Two Imperiled Species

June 3, 2013

Marja H. Bakermans B.S. Biology: Bucknell University M.S. Natural Resources: The Ohio State University Ph. D. Natural Resources: The Ohio State University Currently: Assitant Biology Professor, Worcester Polytechnic Institute Marja writes: I possess a strong commitment to student education, and a goal of mine is to stimulate students’ critical thinking and problem solving abilities. I…

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George L. Hunt – Marine Ornithology: Some Thoughts on the Development of a Young Discipline

May 6, 2013

George L. Hunt Education: 1965 Harvard College. AB, Biology 1965-1966 University of Pennsylvania. 1971 Harvard University. Ph.D., Biology Employment: 1970-1976 University of California, Irvine: Assistant Professor 1976-1982 University of California, Irvine: Associate Professor 1979-1983 University of California, Irvine: Chair, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology 1982-2005 University of California, Irvine: Professor 2005- University of Washington,…

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Harry Vogel – The State of the Loon

April 1, 2013

Harry Vogel received his BES degree in environment and resource studies and biology from the University of Waterloo, ON, in 1990 and his MSc degree in zoology from University of Guelph, ON, in 1995. In his professional career he has been Project Biologist and Coordinator for Canadian Lakes Loon Survey for Bird Studies, Canada; Trustee,…

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George L. Armistead – pOrnithology: The Birds…and the Birds and the Bees

March 4, 2013

George Armistead, who has been birding for nearly thirty years, hails from Philadelphia, where he lives with his wife, Laura, in center city. He attended the University of Pennsylvania and completed both a B.A. and an M.A. in environmental studies. He worked for seven years in the ornithology department of the Academy of Natural Sciences…

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Cagan Sekercioglu – Conserving Birds Around the World: From Species to Landscapes and People.

February 4, 2013

Cagan Sekercioglu B.A. 1997, Anthropology, Harvard University B.A. 1997, Biology, Harvard University. Project: The effects of logging-based habitat modification on the vegetation structure and forest bird communities of the Kibale Forest National Park, Uganda Ph.D. 2003, Department of Biology – Ecology, Stanford University Center for Conservation Biology. Project: Causes and Consequences of Bird Extinctions Associate…

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Doug Hitchcox – Monhegan Island

December 3, 2012

Doug Hitchcox is a 2011 graduate of University of Maine in Orono. He is currently Maine Audubon store manager at the Scarborough Marsh Nature Center.

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Ann M. Haynes-Sutton, PhD – Streamertails, Orangequits and Redstarts: 325 Years of Ornithology in Jamaica

November 5, 2012

Ann Haynes-Sutton, conservation ecologist and ornithologist, is the senior author of A Photographic Field Guide to the Birds of Jamaica published by Princeton Press in 2009. She owns and manages Marshall’s Pen, a private nature reserve and one of the premier birding locations in Jamaica, and leads bird tours. Her other interests include working on…

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