Upcoming Programs
We are pleased to announce that Nuttall monthly meetings are back in person at Harvard.
Amber Roth - A 25-year journey to recover a rapidly declining forest songbird, the Golden-winged Warbler
March 6, 2023
Assistant Professor of Forest Wildlife Management, School of Forest Resources and the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Conservation Biology, University of Maine
Dr. Amber Roth began studying Golden-winged Warbler in 1998 as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin. Little did she know then that this was the beginning of a long journey of research, monitoring, and conservation to aid this rapidly declining migratory forest species. Today she is leading a team of researchers to understand the factors driving Golden-winged Warbler distribution and demographics in order to improve interventions to recover the species.
Amber Roth is an Assistant Professor of Forest Wildlife Management in the School of Forest Resources and the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Conservation Biology at the University of Maine. She received her MS degree in Wildlife Ecology from the University of Wisconsin and her PhD degree in Forest Resources from Michigan Technological University. She is co-chair of the Golden-winged Warbler Working Group, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, and is coordinator of the Midwest Migration Network. She has researched and conserved Golden-winged Warblers for 25 years. Her research interests include bird habitat-management relationships in temperate and tropical forests, migratory bird ecology, and demographics of declining wildlife species. Currently she leads a team of researchers seeking to understand the response of Golden-winged Warbler to climate and land use changes and identify key demographic factors driving the population decline.
Rebecca Jo Safran - The role of adaptation in phenotype divergence and speciation: an integrative and comparative perspective
April 3, 2023
Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder
Evolutionary mechanisms lead to changes in the phenotypic and genomic features of populations; population genetics and patterns of phenotype differentiation are often used to infer which of these mechanisms are at work. Here, I highlight the need to more directly study the underlying processes and mechanistic basis of population-level patterns. Barn swallows (Hirundo rustica) are widespread throughout their northern hemisphere-wide breeding distribution with fascinating levels of morphological and behavioral divergence among six closely related populations. My lab studies the role of evolutionary mechanisms in shaping phenotype and genomic variation among populations in this young species complex. Experiments and selection studies within populations predict population-level differences in signaling traits and migratory behavior. Analyses within hybrid zones also reveal that differences in both signal and migratory traits are predictive of gene flow and the evolution of reproductive isolation among sub-species in secondary contact.
Dr. Rebecca (Becca) Safran is a Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder, and co-director of Inside the Greenhouse for creative climate communication. As an evolutionary biologist, Becca’s interests are focused on the formation of new species with a special focus on one of the most widespread birds on planet earth: the barn swallow. Becca is passionate about social justice and belonging in STEM, a topic her research group has worked on collaboratively.
Pepper Trail - Fighting Crime with Feathers: The Casebook of a Forensic Ornithologist
May 1, 2023
Forensic Ornithologist for the US Fish and Wildlife Forensic Wildlife
Dr. Pepper Trail served as the senior forensic ornithologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Office of Law Enforcement for over 20 years. During this time, he worked on over 2000 cases, identifying bird remains submitted as evidence in wildlife crime investigations. This evidence ranged from carved hornbill skulls to Harpy Eagle headdresses to oil-covered roadrunners to hummingbird love charms to live Indonesian songbirds. He also established The Feather Atlas of North American Birds, the leading website for feather identification. He will describe this unique career in a talk that is by turns entertaining and appalling, illustrating the vital role of wildlife law enforcement in bird conservation.
Pepper Trail grew up roaming the woods and fields of New York’s Finger Lakes region. His early interest in natural history led him to a biology major at Cornell University. He followed this with a Master’s degree from U.C. Davis for his research on the social behavior and ecology of Acorn Woodpeckers in the Chiricahua Mountains of Arizona. Trail returned to Cornell for his Ph.D., conducting a long-term field study of the spectacular Guianan Cock-of-the-Rock in Suriname, work that resulted in publications in National Geographic and Science. After research stints based in Panama, San Francisco, and American Samoa, Trail settled with his family in Oregon. From 1998 until his retirement in 2021, he was the senior ornithologist at the National Fish and Wildlife Forensic Laboratory, where he analyzed bird remains in wildlife crime cases, and created the Feather Atlas of North American Birds, the premier feather identification website. Trail was a founding board member of the Society for Wildlife Forensic Science and served on the wildlife subcommittee of the federal workforce to create forensic science standards. He is a Fellow of the American Ornithological Society and has authored more than forty papers in avian behavioral ecology, conservation, and forensics. A sought-after speaker, he provides conservation training and leads natural history tours around the world.
David Bonter - Public engagement in science: For birds, people, and conservation
June 5, 2023
Arthur A. Allen Director of Citizen Science at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Studying birds provide a remarkable window into the coupling of natural and human systems. This presentation will explore what we have learned about birds and people through engaging the public in scientific research. With a focus on Project FeederWatch (www.feederwatch.org), a program with data from more than 12 million hours of observation, and NestWatch (www.nestwatch.org), a program with greater than 2.5 million visits to bird nests, we will share insights on changes in bird populations, range expansions, climate change, invasive species, and how watching birds affects people.
David Bonter is the Arthur A. Allen Director of Citizen Science at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, where he serves as co-Director for the Center for Engagement in Science and Nature. He manages large-scale participatory science projects including Project FeederWatch and NestWatch, teaches field-based avian ecology courses at Cornell University, and takes great pride in mentoring a gaggle of undergraduate students through the independent research and publishing process. David is a former president of the Association of Field Ornithologists and is a fellow of the American Ornithological Society.
Past Programs
(NOC members, login to view and listen to presentations)
Ted Floyd – Birding at Night
Ted Floyd is the Editor of Birding, the flagship publication of the American Birding Association. He has published widely on birds and ecological topics. Ted has written more than 125 articles, with contributions to scholarly journals such as Ecology, Oecologia, Animal Behaviour, Journal of Animal Ecology, and Trends in Ecology and Evolution and contributions to…
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Scott Weidensaul – Birds of a Feather
Born in 1959, Scott Weidensaul has lived almost all of his life among the long ridges and endless valleys of eastern Pennsylvania, in the heart of the central Appalachians, a landscape that has defined much of his work. His writing career began in 1978 with a weekly natural history column in the local newspaper, the…
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Kurk Dorsey – Of Mallards and Men
Kurk Dorsey, Associate Professor of History, University of New Hampshire, received his BA at Cornell University, his MA at Northwestern University and his PhD at Yale. His current fields of research are US foreign policy, environmental history and history of Canada. Professor Dorsey approaches the history of the environmental movement’s signal law, the migratory bird…
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Joey Mason – Kestrels and Cranberries
Joey Mason is a master bander who has been involved in several raptor-related projects over the years. She has been researching Eastern Bluebirds, Tree Swallows, and American Kestrels around cranberry bogs in southeastern Massachusetts since 1989.
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Henry Lumsden – Restoration of Trumpeter Swans
Henry Lumsden was born in Edinburgh, Scotland and grew up in Aberdeenshire. He joined the RAF in 1941 were he was trained as a pilot and served as a flying instructor. After the war he joined the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests (later renamed Ministry of Natural Resources) as a biologist. He has intensely…
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Drew Wheelan – Beyond Deepwater: Examining the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and the Lessons Learned
Drew Wheelan, who grew up in southern Rhode Island, graduated from Evergreen State College in 1996 and since then has worked with birds throughout the United States, Amazonian Peru and Ecuador, as well as Panama, Costa Rica and Mexico. A fight with a life threatening illness lent to him a fresh perspective on life and…
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Alvaro Jaramillo – Birds, Birding, and the Field Guide to Chile
Alvaro (Al) Jaramillo was born in Chile but began birding in Toronto, Canada, where he lived as a youth. He studied ecology and evolution in Toronto and Vancouver, earning a masters degree studying co-evolution in Argentine cowbirds. Research forays and backpacking trips introduced Alvaro to the riches of the Neotropics, where he has traveled extensively.…
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Joan Walsh – Massachusetts Breeding Bird Atlas II
Joan Walsh is the Coordinator of the Massachusetts Breeding Bird Atlas 2, and has been working with Mass Audubon since 2006. Her interests are in the interaction between landscapes and bird communities, and in bird breeding behavior. During the 1990s Joan was the Director of Research at New Jersey Audubon Society where she coordinated their…
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David Bird – The American Kestrel: The White Mouse for Raptor Research?
Professor of Wildlife Biology and Director of the Avian Science and Conservation Centre of McGill University, Montreal, Canada, Dr. DavidBird’s main research interest is focused on raptorial birds, which encompasses virtually all aspects of their biology. He has at his disposal a captive colony of 200 or more American Kestrels. He collaborates with other scientists…
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Chris Wood, Jessie Barry – Learning & Recording Bird Songs
Chris Wood is Project Leader for eBird at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. Chris began birding at age five and still gets into the field enough to make the rest of the Cornell staff jealous. His primary interests include bird distribution, identification, vocalizations and conservation throughout the Americas. In addition to his work at the…
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Ernesto Ruelas Inzunza – The State of North American Raptors
Since September 2008, Ernesto Inzunza, a postdoctoral fellow at the Bilology Department, Dartmouth College, has been an instructor for a course in tropical biology and will teach Methods in Ecology next summer. His research project is titled The fingerprint of climate change in hawk migration phenology. Ernesto continues to lead the Raptor Population Index Project…
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John Kricher (moderator), Wayne Petersen, Bob Stymeist, Jim Berry, Peter Alden, Shawn Carey, David Larson – Birding: Past, Present, and Future
John Kricher is A. Howard Meneely Professor of Biology at Wheaton College, a Fellow in the American Ornithologists Union, and member of the Science Advisory Committee of the Council of the Massachusetts Audubon Society. He has previously served as president of the Association of Field Ornithologists, the Wilson Ornithological Society and the Nuttall Ornithological Club,…
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Becky Harris, Ellen Jedrey – Post-breeding Staging Roseate Terns: Cape Cod and Nantucket are Critical Habitats
As Director of MassAudubon’s Coastal Waterbird Program, Becky Harris oversees the monitoring, management and protection of beach nesting birds at over 100 sites throughout southeastern Massachusetts. She also holds an adjunct faculty position at Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine in the Center for Conservation Medicine. Before coming to Mass Audubon in 2006, she founded…
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Brian Harrington – Knots in Massachusetts
Manomet Senior Scientist Brian Harrington has been studying the distribution and coastal ecology of shorebirds since 1972, focusing on migration and southern South American wintering areas. Brian, working with hundreds of cooperators, has led research on shorebird use of coastal habitat at migration stopover sites, as well as identifying major migration sites of shorebirds throughout…
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Ian Newton – Findings from a Long-term Study of Sparrowhawks
Dr. Ian Newton is respected world-wide both as a biologist with a special interest and expertise in this subject and as a communicator. He is a seasoned and popular key note speaker at National and International meetings, and his talks are often the high point of conferences. He has been interested in birds since boyhood,…
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Carla J. Dove – Bird-Aircraft Strike Hazards
Dr. Carla Dove is a Research Scientist in the Department of Ornithology at the National Museum of Natural History. Her expertise is in the field of microscopic and molecular identification of feathers. She applies forensic methodologies to determine species of birds from fragmentary evidence using microscopy, whole feather comparisons with museum specimens and DNA barcoding.…
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Navjot S. Sodhi – Southeast Asian Forest Birds: Losses, Threats and Conservation
Field problem presented: Glenn d’Entremont – Lack of Documentation, Quincy Christmas Count records Dr. Navjot S. Sodhi is currently a Professor of Conservation Ecology at the National University of Singapore. He received his PhD from the University of Saskatchewan. He has been studying the effects of rain forest loss and degradation on Southeast Asian fauna…
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François Vuilleumier – Ernst Mayr, Scientist and Mentor: Does One Live Up to Genius?
Field problem presented: David Small – Birds and Powerline Management in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont Francois Vuilleumier, acclaimed ornithologist and editor-in-chief of the new book Birds of North America, is Curator Emeritus of the Department of Ornithology at the American Museum of Natural History. Author and professor of ornithology Francois Vuilleumier was a student of Ernst…
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Nick Locke – REGUA—Reserva Ecológica Guapiaçu: A successful conservation project in the Atlantic rainforest of SE Brazil
Field problem presented: Kim Smith – Breeding Ecology of Early Successional Birds in Western Connecticut Nicholas Locke is president of the Guapiaçu Ecological Reserve (REGUA), located an hour and a half from the city of Rio de Janeiro. REGUA, a grassroots NGO, started in 1996 after a visit by a UK naturalist who saw the…
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Nicholas Rodenhouse – Effects of Climate Change on Migratory Birds
Field problem presented: Soheil Zendeh – Take a Second Look (TASL) Nicholas Rodenhouse is Professor of Biological Sciences at Wellesley College where he teaches ecology, organismal biology, conservation biology, and environmental studies. A member of the Wellesley College faculty since 1988, Professor Rodenhouse received a A.B. degree from Hope College in 1977 and an M.A. degree…
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