Lecturer to explore astounding feats of migratory birds
Scott Weidensaul (Photo credit: Amy Weidensaul).
Renowned ornithologist Scott Weidensaul will present a lecture, “A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds,” on Thursday, Sept. 23 at 7 p.m. in Fenton Hall Room 105.
The event is free and open to the public.
Organizers note that even as scientists make astounding discoveries about the navigational and physiological feats that enable migratory birds to cross immense oceans or fly above the highest mountains, go weeks without sleep or remain in unbroken flight for months at a stretch, humans have brought many migrants to the brink.
In this talk, Mr. Weidensaul, an author and researcher, will take attendees around the globe -- with researchers in the lab probing the limits of what migrating birds can do, to the shores of the Yellow Sea in China, the remote mountains of northeastern India where tribal villages saved the greatest gathering of falcons on the planet and the Mediterranean, where activists and police are battling bird poachers -- to learn how people are fighting to understand and save the world's great bird migrations.
Weidensaul is the author of more than 30 books on natural history, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist "Living on the Wind" and his latest, the New York Times bestseller "A World on the Wing." Weidensaul is a contributing editor for Audubon, a columnist for Bird Watcher's Digest and writes for a variety of other publications. He is a Fellow of the American Ornithological Society and an active field researcher, studying saw-whet owl migration for more than two decades, as well as winter hummingbirds, bird migration in Alaska, and the winter movements of snowy owls through Project SNOWstorm, which he co-founded. He also co-founded the Northeast Motus Collaboration, a network of 150 automated telemetry receivers across the eastern U.S., to track the movements of bat, insects and small birds.
The lecture is being sponsored by the Carnahan Jackson Fund for the Humanities of the Fredonia College Foundation, the Cathy and Jesse Marion Art Gallery and the Department of Biology.
