Jamestown, NY - With migratory birds often traveling at night, it is difficult for scientists to monitor their declining flocks.
The researcher who determined how to track these birds by using their distinctive nighttime vocalizations will be the presenter at the Audubon Center and Sanctuary's next First Friday Lunch Bunch.
While we sleep, large waves of migrant birds pass over our houses during the spring and fall migration periods. Many utter short vocalizations to maintain contact with others and avoid mid-air collisions. On good migration nights thousands of these calls can be documented.
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The Audubon Center and Sanctuary is participating in a nationwide study that monitors the nighttime calls of migratory birds. At Audubon’s First Friday Lunch Bunch on December 7, researcher Bill Evans will share his insights from 25 years of listening to these calls. Evans and Audubon Program Director Jennifer Schlick are shown here on the roof at Audubon with the monitoring equipment.
At 11 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 7, Bill Evans will share insights from 25 years of obsessively listening to this phenomenon and present results from an evolving night flight call monitoring network across the continent in which the Jamestown Audubon Society is participating.
Evans program will be on the flight calls songbirds give in nocturnal migration and how monitoring them is leading to a new index to their populations and distributions.
Now the director of Old Bird Inc., a nonprofit focused on nocturnal bird migration research and education, his work has been featured in many media, including PBS's Nova, the BBC, NPR, Science, The New York Times, and more. His expertise on nocturnal bird migration has led him into active involvement with efforts to mitigate avian fatalities at communications towers, wind turbines, and hydrofracking drilling rigs.
A resident of Ithaca, New York, Evans's current research is directed toward understanding the impacts of artificial light on night-migrating birds and their concentration dynamics along shorelines and in mountainous terrain.
Following the presentation, coffee and tea will be provided for a BYO brown bag lunch. The fee for attending is $5 for Friends of the Nature Center and $7 for others. Reservations are not required.
The Audubon Center and Sanctuary is at 1600 Riverside Road, one-quarter mile east of Route 62 between Jamestown and Warren.
For more information, call (716) 569-2345 or visit www.jamestownaudubon.org.