Monthly Meeting March 24, 7:30 pm by Zoom
Speaker: Andrea Patterson Braddock Bay Bird Observatory has been banding birds on
the south shore of Lake Ontario since 1986, and we’ve collected data on more than
300,000 birds. Thanks to a platoon of collaborating researchers including local
professors and their undergraduate and graduate students, our data has been used to
answer a variety of questions concerning the behavior, ecology, and biology of birds.
Join us for a romp through 40 years of research, as we tackle questions like: • Have we
noticed any changes in bird populations or migrations over time? • Are migrating flocks
just associations of birds that happen to be coordinated by time, place, and species, or
is there something more meaningful at work? • Why do birds carry extra fat in the
spring? • Why do some insectivores switch their diet to fruit in the fall? • Is it possible to
distinguish individual Magnolia Warblers just by their night flight calls? • What is that
thing on the chin of that Great Crested Flycatcher? We promise that you don’t need a
knowledge of statistics or the scientific method to understand and enjoy this fun
overview of our work. Andrea Patterson began volunteering at Braddock Bay Bird
Observatory in 2009, and banded her first bird in the spring of 2010 when she took a
bander training class from Elizabeth Brooks. Since then, she has handled more than
20,000 birds as part of the Observatory’s long-term migration study and has been lucky
enough to spend time banding Saltmarsh and Nelson’s Sparrows in New Hampshire,
rails (including one Black Rail!) in Louisiana, and Tawny-crowned Greenlets in Belize.
Now the executive director of the Braddock Bay Bird Observatory, Andrea coordinates
the migration, summer, and owl monitoring programs; facilitates the use of the
Observatory as a field site for a half-dozen research affiliates; and teaches four banding
classes annually.
