Blog Archives

featured in "The living bird" book

12/23/2016

The Living Bird: 100 Years of Listening to Nature is a beautiful hardcover book that celebrates the joyful and complex relationship between birds and people. The large format volume weaves together photos by award-winning photographer Gerrit Vyn with essays by Barbara Kingsolver, Jared Diamond, Lyanda Lynn Haupt, Scott Weidensaul, and Cornell Lab of Ornithology director John Fitzpatrick. - Mountaineers Books

Read the profile on my path to becoming an ornithologist on pp. 168-169. I am honored to be included to showcase what it means to research birds.

For more on Gerrit's photography: http://gerritvynphoto.com

The book even has a trailer, which of course includes the beautiful song of the black-throated blue warbler.

new year, new project, new bird!

12/23/2016

New year, new project, new bird, new region of the world to explore... my Smithsonian Bond grant was funded! I will be examining genetic and song divergence between migratory and sedentary populations of the grasshopper sparrow in the Caribbean Islands.

What is the connection between James Bond the ornithologist and 007? - Author Ian Fleming was an avid bird watcher and regularly used the field guide, "Birds of the West Indies", written by ornithologist James Bond to identify Caribbean birds. Fleming thought James Bond would be a great name for a spy in his novel and the rest is history.