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 Programs / Lectures of The Linnaean Society of New YorkThe
regular meetings (second Tuesdays, September through May) feature
illustrated lectures on natural history topics. Unless otherwise
announced, the meetings are held at 7:30 p.m. at the American Museum of
Natural History (AMNH), and are open to the public free of
charge. Anyone who wishes to do so is welcome to join the speaker at
dinner before meetings. Please check the meeting announcements on our
Facebook page (Linnaean Society of New York), or local e-mail birding
reports/listservs.
In the 2011–2012 season, there will be an early program before each of the regular meetings. These programs, which will start at 6:00 p.m. and last about an hour, will also be open to the public. No Society business will be transacted at the early programs. Unless another venue is noted, programs are held in the American Museum of Natural History, usually in the Linder Theater; please enter at West 77th St. between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue. Programs/Lectures 2011-2012September 13, 2011 6:00 p.m. BIRDS BRITANNIA: COUNTRYSIDE BIRDS Part of the 2010 BBC-TV documentary series made with the participation of many British birding luminaries such as David Attenborough, this hour- long episode was acclaimed one of the best. It features Britain’s most prominent ornithologist, Tim Birkhead, who in March 2011 accepted the Linnaean Society’s invitation to become an Honorary Member. 7:30 p.m. TEN BIRDS THAT CHANGED BIRDING Jeffrey A. Gordon A sought-after leader and speaker at birding festivals, Jeffrey Gordon has had a wide-ranging career, from being an interpretive naturalist in Yosemite to a guide for Victor Emanuel Nature Tours. An outstanding photographer, he provided the photographs for the 2010 edition of the Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America and for its separate Eastern and Western editions. In November 2010, the board of directors of the American Birding Association named him president, convinced that he could return ABA to its glory days. He will discuss how, over the last forty years in North America, the sighting of ten individual birds—among them the Ross’s Gull seen at Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1975—changed the way birding is done and understood in North America. October 11, 2011 6:00 p.m. A TALK WITH HELEN HAYS AMNH ornithologist Helen Hays—director of the Great Gull Island Project, recipient of the Eisenmann Medal (1989), and the first woman to be president of the Linnaean Society (1973)—will share stories of Great Gull, the Society, and the Museum. 7:30 p.m. ADVENTURES IN MOLT Peter Pyle A biologist for 24 years on the Farallon Islands off California, where he studied many forms of marine life from albatrosses to great white sharks, Peter Pyle is best known for his Identification Guide to North American Birds. Popularly called the “Bander’s Bible” and based on the study of more than 60,000 birds in museum skin collections, it is the most comprehensive guide available for identifying species and subspecies, sex and age by using evidence such as individual feathers. In his talk, Pyle will examine various aspects of bird molt, “presenting the vastly improved Humphrey-Parkes system of molt and plumage terminology in layperson’s terms; considering the interactions between bird molt, plumage color, age, and identification; illustrating the fascinating molt patterns of ducks, ptarmigans, alcids, herons, raptors, and birds that undergo Stafflemauser (the stepwise molt of many large birds that need to maintain flight while molting); imparting the importance of molting to bird conservation; and concluding with thoughts on molt in tropical birds and avenues for future research.” November 8, 2011 6:00 p.m. OPTICS Jerry Connolly, owner of The Audubon Shop in Madison, Connecticut, and a member of Swarovski Optik’s Birding Advisory Council, will display, discuss, and allow hands-on tryouts of the latest in birding optics. He will also offer tips on how to become a better digiscoper. 7:30 p.m. WARBLERS IN REAL LIFE Tom Stephenson. In a preview of his forthcoming book of the same title, Tom Stephenson—musician, author, photographer, lecturer, and tour leader—will focus on some lesser-known points of visual identification of warblers and how they, and thus other songbirds, can be identified by songs, flight calls, and contact calls, using sonograms and other techniques available free to computer users. He will also describe the system he created for learning bird songs after he had studied how memory actually works. “My own memory is nothing special,” he writes in one of his regular Surfbird blogs, but he goes on to say, “using this system I have been able to learn 300 or 400 songs for each of my last several trips to Africa, South America, and Asia.” December 13, 2011 6:00 p.m WATERBIRDS TO WOODPECKERS In the first part of a two-part program, AMNH ornithologist Mary LeCroy, using the Museum’s unrivaled collection of bird skins, will present specimens of North American birds every birder would love to see, including Ivory Gull, Eskimo Curlew, Black Rail, and Ivory-billed Woodpecker. 7:30 p.m. PATTERNS OF SPECIATION IN AUSTRALIAN AND NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS Scott V. Edwards Scott Edwards is Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Curator of Ornithology, and Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. His work with avian DNA sequences has led him to suspect that all the world’s songbirds—more than half of all bird species—are descended from Australian ancestors. He writes about his talk, “I will review the major patterns in the biodiversity of Australian and North American birds and show the ways in which the two avifaunas are similar and different and how modern genetics is providing a picture of the timing and mechanisms behind this striking biodiversity.” January 10, 2012 6:00 p.m. A TALK WITH IRVING CANTOR A mentor to many New York City birders, Irving Cantor began birding in Central Park in 1932, when he was 12 years old. His memory of the park back then—confirmed by the records he has kept—is of days when seeing 40 Prairie Warblers, for example, was not unusual. He joined the Linnaean Society in 1940 and has much to say about the changes he has seen in it, the park, and birding in general. 7:30 p.m. BIRD RECORDS IN THE INFORMATION AGE: OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES POSED BY NEW MEDIA Shaibal Mitra Shaibal Mitra, assistant professor of biology at the College of Staten Island, is the editor of The Kingbird, the quarterly publication of the New York State Ornithological Association. A co-compiler of bird records for the New York City and Long Island regions and a former member of the New York State Avian Records Committee, he currently chairs the Rhode Island Avian Records Committee. He will speak on the rapid, technology-driven changes in many aspects of researching, reporting, and recording birds. Acknowledging that the vast increases in the connectivity among observers and the volume of information that can be shared present exceptional opportunities for producers and users of citizen science-generated ornithological data, he asks, “Might this expedience compete with or discourage the acquisition of more general knowledge of status and occurrence? Does digital photography, which has revolutionized the documentation of rarities, detract from careful field study?” These and other questions will be explored via familiar examples drawn from the New York birding scene and illustrated in a multimedia format. February 14, 2012 6:00 p.m. STUDIES IN SUPERB STARLINGS Julia Pilowsky and Lea Pollock, two undergraduates who have been working in Dustin Rubenstein's lab at Columbia University, assisting him in his long-term study of Superb Starlings in Kenya, will present their findings about this species of cooperative breeders, which has one of the most complex social structures in the avian world. Ms. Pilowsky has studied female song and how it relates to male song, Ms. Pollack has studied female dispersal patterns, and both have made discoveries that are intriguing in themselves and suggestive of possible patterns in many other species of cooperative breeders, avian and non-avian as well (Note: this is a change to the original February program) 7:30 p.m. HOW BUTTERFILES WORK—AND HOW THEY SURVIVE Rick Cech An active field naturalist, author, and photographer, Rick Cech is a curatorial affiliate in entomology at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and the principal author and photographer of The Butterflies of the East Coast: An Observer’s Guide (Princeton, 2005). His recent work includes editing and photography for the iPhone app Audubon Butterflies—A Field Guide to North American Butterflies and development of the FieldGuides regional butterfly series. He writes of the topic of his talk, “The durability of butterflies over millions of years poses a challenge to those who believe that ‘survival of the fittest’ is solely a matter of tooth and claw. Our cultural perceptions of butterflies provide an inexact view (at best) of the subtle adaptive features that distinguish this unique class of organisms.” March 13, 2012 LINNAEAN SOCIETY ANNUAL MEETING & DINNER (WITH ELECTION OF OFFICERS) [Open only to members and their guests] A LIFETIME OF BIRD-BANDING STUDIES Clive Minton The recipient of every major award in Australian ornithology, Clive Minton is the 2012 recipient of the Eisenmann Medal, the Linnaean Society’s highest award, given for excellence in ornithology and encouragement of the amateur. A metallurgical executive by profession, he was a pioneer of cannon mist netting in his native England and introduced the technique in Australia, where he moved in 1978. A year later, he was the first to realize that Roebuck Bay near Broome in southern Australia had one of the world’s largest populations of wintering shorebirds. He was instrumental in founding the Broome Bird Observatory and, through banding there, in discovering the East Asian Flyway, used by hundreds of thousands of shorebirds that migrate through China as far as Siberia. That discovery led to Australian treaties with Japan and China protecting migratory birds. For decades he has led teams of amateur volunteer banders in Russia, South America, and North America, most notably at Delaware Bay, where he has been a leader in efforts to save the Red Knot. April 10, 2012 6:00 p.m. FLYCATCHERS TO FINCHES In the second part of a two-part program, AMNH ornithologist Mary LeCroy, using the Museum's unrivaled collection of bird skins, will present specimens of North American birds every birder would love to see, including Sedge Wren, Bachman's Warbler, Henslow's Sparrow and Varied Bunting. 7:30 p.m. THE BIRDS OF PARADISE PROJECT: REVEALING A BIOLOGICAL WONDER OF THE WORLD Edwin Scholes III The Curator of Biodiversity Video at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds, Edwin Scholes has, for more than a decade, studied and filmed in the wild all 39 species of the family Paradisaeidae—birds of paradise. Endemic in New Guinea and in a few surrounding areas, these birds evolved from a common ancestor into such diverse sizes, plumages, and courtship behaviors that the differences among them resemble those between families of birds rather than those within families. He will show his acclaimed films and discuss how the dramatic differences in these birds came to be and what that says about the nature of biological diversity. May 8, 2012 6:00 p.m. MEMBERS' PHOTO SHOW Deborah Allen, whose photographs have appeared in such publications as North American Birds, National Geographic Explorer, Birder’s World, Bird Watcher’s Digest, WildBird, National Wildlife, and Natural History, will moderate. She invites Linnaean members to bring digital photos for viewing. For the sake of convenience, files should be of the size suitable for a PowerPoint presentation: 72 dpi medium-resolution jpegs sized to 1024 pixels wide by 683 pixels high. Horizontal images work better than verticals. The photos (no more than 10 or 15 per member) should be burned to a CD with the photographer’s name written on it. 7:30 p.m. SAVING THE CAHOW AND OTHER SEABIRDS OF THE URBANIZED OCEANIC ISLAND OF BERMUDA: CHALLENGES AND SUCCESSES David B. Wingate In 1951, when he was fifteen years old, David B. Wingate helped rediscover the Bermuda Petrel, called the Cahow by Bermudans, a bird thought to have been extinct for more than 300 years. To save the Cahow and other endangered native birds, in 1963 he began his life’s work: restoring as much as possible of Bermuda’s precolonial ecology. He has been most successful on the previously barren, 15-acre Nonsuch Island, first when he served as the live-in factotum, planting more than 3,000 trees himself, for example, and later when he became the Conservation Officer for the Bermuda Government Parks Department and subsequently president of Bermuda Audubon. His talk will address what Kevin Kelly in the chapter on Nonsuch in his book Out of Control noted as “the perennial paradox all whole-system makers confront: where do you start? Everything requires everything else to stay up, yet you can’t levitate the whole thing at once. Some things have to happen first. And in the correct order.” Wingate has been the subject of three documentaries and the recipient of the Eisenmann Medal (1991), King’s Honours (The Netherlands), Queen’s Honours (U.K.), the MBE and OBE. SUMMER PROGRAMS 2012 These
three programs, led by
experts in their fields, will be held on the second or third Tuesday of
each of the summer
months. The venue for each will be Central Park, with the meeting
points and times as indicated. These programs (also listed in the Field
Trip schedule) will not be walking tours but in-depth
explorations
of one aspect of a small part of the park. They will take place in
drizzle but not in rain, except for the June program, which will go in
anything short of a downpour. For the July and August programs, please
bring a flashlight if you have one. June 12, 2012 July 17, 2012 August 21, 2012 |
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