~ HOFFMANN BIRD CLUB ~

 

 

 

 

 

   

   

Summary of Meetings – Details below

 

September 2, 2011 – Friday @ 5:30 pm

Potluck Dinner and Monthly Meeting

 Pleasant Valley Sanctuary

427 W. Mountain Rd., Lenox

 

October 4, 2011 – Tuesday @ 7PM

Monthly Meeting

Berkshire Life Insurance, 700 South St., Pittsfield

“Careless Cowbirds and Cheating Cuckoos”

Mark Hauber, Ph.D.

Hunter College

Department of Psychology

 

November 8, 2011 - Tuesday @ 7PM

Monthly Meeting

Berkshire Life Insurance, 700 South St., Pittsfield

"The Singing Life of Birds”

Don Kroodsma

Emeritus Professor, University of Massachusetts

 

December 5, 2011 – Monday @ 7PM

Monthly Meeting

Berkshire Life Insurance, 700 South St., Pittsfield

Members Night

Everyone is asked to bring 10 pictures to share.

 

March 6, 2012 – Tuesday @ 7PM

Monthly Meeting

Berkshire Life Insurance, 700 South St., Pittsfield

“Birding Cuba: Impressions From a Forbidden Paradise”

Wayne Petersen

 

April 2, 2012 – Monday @ 7PM

Monthly Meeting

Berkshire Life Insurance, 700 South St., Pittsfield

“The Balance of Nature”

John Kricher

Professor of Biology

Wheaton College

 

May 4, 2012 – Friday (location T.B.A.)

Annual Banquet

“The Amazing Wing Songs of Manakins”

Kimberly Sue Bostwick, Ph.D.

Curator of Bird & Mammals

Cornell University

June 8, 2012 – Friday 5:00 pm

Picnic and Birding at Pleasant Valley

Pleasant Valley Sanctuary

427 W. Mountain Rd., Lenox

5:00PM Birding, 6:00PM Picnic

 

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Program Details….

 

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

“Careless Cowbirds and Cheating Cuckoos”

Mark Hauber, Ph.D.

Hunter College

Department of Psychology

 

Dr. Hauber has recieved his Ph.D. from Cornell University, in Neurobiology and Behavior.   He says you may leave this presentation loving cowbirds!

 

Cowbirds and many cuckoos may appear like all other birds, calling loudly and displaying brightly iridescent feathers to attract males, but they belong to the minute 1% of all bird species in that they do not build nests and do not provide care for their young. How does then a cowbird chick know who it is and how do cuckoos convince their hosts to accept foreign eggs?  My research focuses on the recognition systems of brood parasitic birds and their hosts, illustrated by diversely unique and beautiful examples from Europe, North and South America, Australasia, and Africa.

 

His research focuses on evolutionary hypotheses and ecological contexts of animal behavior.  We ask, in general, how animals tell apart their friends from their enemies.  As a model system, for example, my own research has focused on brood parasitic birds, such as cuckoos and cowbirds, which lay their eggs in other birds nests.  Why does the host accept the foreign egg and chick in its nest and how does the parasite trick the host to provide more food than its fair share? Other projects in the laboratory focus on the development of vocal recognition of conspecifics and mates, the genetic mating systems of socially monogamous seabirds, the migratory dynamics of seabirds and cuckoos, and decision making by monarch butterflies.  This research is funded by international and national funding agencies, allowing for student-initiated projects to be incorporated in the overall research activity of the lab.

 

http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/psychology/faculty/the-faculty-folder/hauber

 

 

 

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

"The Singing Life of Birds”

Don Kroodsma

Emeritus Professor, University of Massachusetts

 

Bird song provides a unique model system for studying the function, evolution, ontogeny, and control of behavior patterns. In trying to understand the biology of bird song, we ask questions at all four levels. In our studies of New World warblers (Parulinae), for example, we hope to understand not only how the birds use two different categories of songs, but also the exact function of the different song forms, when, if, and from whom the birds learn these behaviors, and exactly how the birds know when to use the appropriate behaviors. With the marsh wren, our goal is to understand the neural control and ontogeny of the songs and especially the diversity of behaviors among North American populations; males in eastern and western populations differ dramatically in their singing behaviors, and a special interest is what happens in zones of Great Plains sympatry where these two forms meet. Our third focus is on the differences in song development and neural control between songbirds, to which the wrens and

warblers belong, and the suboscines, the sister group of the songbirds in the order Passeriformes. Overall, our goals are, quite simply, to understand, through observations and experiments in both the laboratory and the field, the diversity and evolution of vocal behaviors among birds.

 

http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/about/directories/faculty/donald-e-kroodsma

 

           

           

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

“Birding Cuba: Impressions From a Forbidden Paradise”

Wayne Petersen

 

 

Since the United States severed relations with Castro’s Cuba in 1961, American birders have been all but forbidden to visit the tropical island of Cuba – the largest landmass in the Caribbean and the one richest in avian diversity.  Under a permit held by the Caribbean Conservation Trust in recent years it has been possible for small groups of American birders to participate in bird surveys coordinated by the Rouge River Bird Observatory and the University of Michigan, an effort defined by the U.S. Department of Treasury as a humanitarian project for the environment.  In 2006 and 2008 Wayne Petersen was privileged to lead Mass Audubon groups to this “forbidden paradise,” an island located a mere 90 miles from Key West.  In an illustrated presentation he will share his knowledge, impressions, and experiences of birding on this remarkable island.  From the world’s tiniest bird species and several of the rarest on the planet, to the myriad Neotropical migrants that make Cuba their winter home, attendees will learn something about Caribbean avifauna in general, and the many conservation issues specifically facing birds in Cuba.                                                       

 

Wayne Petersen is director of the Massachusetts Important Bird Areas (IBA) Program for the Massachusetts Audubon Society.  He has lectured and conducted birding workshops across North America for nearly 40 years, and his tour leading experiences have practically taken him around the world.  His writing projects include authoring the National Audubon Society's Pocket Guide to Songbirds and Familiar Backyard Birds (East), co-authoring Birds of Massachusetts and Birds of New England, co-editing the Massachusetts Breeding Bird Atlas, and contributing to The Audubon Society Master Guide to Birding, The Sibley Guide to Bird Life & Behavior, and Arctic Wings.  Wayne was a founding member of the Massachusetts Avian Records Committee, and he currently serves on the advisory committee for the Massachusetts Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program.  He is a past vice president and board member of the American Birding Association and is a New England Regional Editor for North American Birds. His knowledge and broad perspective of the seasonal distribution of New England bird life was recognized in 2005 when he received the American Birding Association’s Ludlow Griscom Award for outstanding contributions in regional ornithology.

 

 

 

Monday, April 2, 2012

“The Balance of Nature”

John Kricher

Professor of Biology

Wheaton College

 

The Balance of Nature is a long-standing assumption that traces its origin back to ancient Greek philosophy.  John Kricher, Professor of Biology at Wheaton College, challenges the concept of balance of nature in his most recent book “The Balance of Nature: Ecology’s Enduring Myth”.  In his presentation using birds as examples, Dr. Kricher will show that nature is not in a state of balance and never has been but that this reality does not undermine but rather strengthens the need for humans to conserve biodiversity and understand what nature really

 

John Kricher is a Professor of Biology at Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts.  A graduate of Temple (B.A.) and Rutgers Universities (Ph.D.), Dr. Kricher teaches courses in ecology, ornithology, and vertebrate evolution. 

 

John has conducted Earthwatch-sponsored research on migrant birds on their wintering grounds in Belize and is the author of over 100 papers and articles in scientific journals, magazines, and newspapers.  His most recent book, The Balance of Nature: Ecology’s Enduring Myth, was published by Princeton University Press in spring of 2009. He has also authored Galapagos: A Natural History, published in hard-cover by Smithsonian Institution Press in 2002 and in soft-cover by Princeton University Press in 2006.  Other books include A Neotropical Companion, and three ecology field guides (Eastern Forests, Rocky Mountain and Southwestern Forests, California and Pacific Northwest Forests) in the Peterson series.  His widely used book, A Neotropical Companion has been translated into Spanish through the Birders' Exchange Program of the American Birding Association.  He has also done two recorded lecture series, one on dinosaurs and one on ecology, published by Modern Scholar.  He has just completed a textbook, Tropical Ecology, that was published by Princeton University Press in Spring 2011.

 

John is a Fellow in the American Ornithologists Union and has served as president of the Association of Field Ornithologists, president of the Wilson Ornithological Society, and president of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, and has been a member of the boards of directors of the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, the New Jersey Audubon Society, and the American Birding Association.  He is currently on the Council of the Massachusetts Audubon Society.

 

John has led trips to many places including Cape May, Block Island, coastal New England, Arizona, the Pacific Northwest, Belize, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Peru, Ecuador, Galapagos Islands, Panama, and Trinidad.  He has lectured for Linblad Tours of the Galapagos Islands, for Society Expeditions trips to Venezuela, Brazil, and Indonesia, and for Glacier Bay Cruise Lines in Alaska.

 

John and his wife Martha Vaughan divide their time between Pocasset, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod and Sunbury, Georgia.

 

 

http://wheatoncollege.edu/faculty/profiles/john-kricher/

 

 

 

 

Friday, May 4, 2012 – Annual Banquet

“The Amazing Wing Songs of Manakins”

Kimberly Sue Bostwick, Ph.D.

Curator of Bird & Mammals

Cornell University

 

 

In this presentation we learn about the incredible mating rituals performed by manakins, a family of small bird species of subtropical and tropical Central and South America. One species in particular, the Club-winged Manakin, “violins” its wings in order to make sound, which requires both a special instrument (its feathers), and special “skills,” in this case extremely rapid wing motions (faster than the wings of hummingbirds or other manakins or the vibration of a rattlesnake’s tail). Another species, the Red Capped Manakin performs an amazing (and hilari-ous) moon walk dance!!! Dr. Bostwick has captured sound-producing displays of numerous different species of manakin with high-speed video. These video recordings show that different evolutionary groups, or clades, of manakins produce sound differently and that even within a given species a male can produce sounds by multiple means.

 

Dr. Kim Bostwick is the Curator of Birds & Mammals at Cornell University. Her main interest is in understanding the evolutionary processes that underlying biological patterns, especially as they relate to sexually selected characteristics of birds. Her research has focused on both the morphological and behavioral aspects of the unique, sexually selected character of wing-sound production found in the manakins. The high-speed videos can be accessed on the web at http://www.cumv.cornell.edu/staff/bostwick.html  or at “youtube” directly http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2Bsu4z9Y3k&feature=BFa&list=FLqSy4NRNUrcY&index=8 .