Mpala Research Center, Kenya
Author: Shailee Shah
Bird of the Day: African Paradise Flycatcher
Bird of the Day: Dark Chanting Goshawk
Spying on Birds
“So, like, what do you do every day?”
I get asked this often and I’m not always sure how to explain it to people without pictures at hand or infinite patience for follow-up questions. So, in this blog post, with the benefit of time to pick the right words and theoretically infinite space to write them out, I figured I would try to provide an adequate answer.
Why fieldwork?
This, I feel, is the question at the crux of the what-do-you-do-every-day question. Why do you have to go to Kenya to do your work? Right, the bird you study is only found there, but why do you have to be out on the savanna everyday – can’t you just bring the birds back to the lab or study them in a zoo?
Of course, you can (nowadays, only with the right permits) and that is precisely what early zoologists did, collecting specimens – alive or dead – from around the world and bringing them back to examine them under microscopes or in aviaries in a rainy British country garden. While this may be convenient, it inevitably renders your conclusions about a bird’s diet or the adaptive nature of its plumage coloration suspect, because they are arrived at out of context. Without the bird having been examined in the environment it’s found in, with different factors that might affect its behavior and morphology in play, it is impossible to understand why it acts the way it does and why it is the way it is. Hence, fieldwork: observing and sampling critters in the wild. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: White-eyed Buzzard
Bird of the Day: Hildebrandt’s Starling
Bird of the Day: Ruffed Grouse
Bird of the Day: A Skein of Snow Geese
Bird of the Day: Bobolink
Bird of the Day: Long-tailed Shrike
Bird of the Day: Rock Bunting
Bird of the Day: Crested Kingfisher
Bird of the Day: Cinereous Tit (Mandal, Uttarakhand)
Bird of the Day: Arctic Tern (Tern Lake, Alaska)
Bird of the Day: Palm Warbler (Appledore Island, Maine)
Bird of the Day: Herring Gull (Appledore Island, Maine)
Bird of the Day: Black-billed Cuckoo (Appledore Island, Maine)
Bird of the Day: Glaucous-winged Gulls (Resurrection Bay, Alaska)
Bird of the Day: Great Black-backed Gull
Appledore Island, Maine
Migration Celebration
When I graduated from Cornell not too long ago, I drew a bird on my graduation hat. It was a stylized yellow-bellied sapsucker, a symbol I encountered almost every day in my four years as an undergraduate as I studied, worked and conducted research at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The Lab shaped my undergraduate experience and inspired my love of science and multimedia. This past weekend I had the gratifying opportunity to give back a little and pass on the inspiration.
As the Autumn chill set in – which in Ithaca means grey skies and a constant drizzle of rain – the Lab opened its doors to the community for a day of Migration Celebration. It was a day to celebrate birds: their fascinating behaviors, plumages, songs, migrations, habitats and ability to bring together people from all walks of life. The event was mainly geared towards children, with innovative educational activities organized by all Lab departments:
“What’s your favorite bird? A sandpiper? Can you draw it? Cool! Now let’s put it on a map and look up where it spends the winter.” Continue reading