Noble Wins Roger Tory Peterson Award
The 2013 Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History Bird Festival was made quite a bit more festive by the announcement that Noble Proctor was receiving the American Birding Association’s highest award: the Roger Tory Peterson Award promoting the Cause of Birding. This ‘lifetime achievement’ award has only been awarded a handful of times but few are more worthy of receiving this honor as Noble Proctor. ABA president Jeff Gordon detoured from his trip to Brazil to stop at RTPI and personally hand Noble this award during an evening program. It was a sensational...
Read MoreBird Fest 2014 day 2
The second day of RTPI’s Bird Fest 2014 took place on Saturday, June 7. The first day featured two excursions focused on wetlands and grasslands while this second day moved us to the forest and the escarpment. The morning trip was to Allegany State Park in Cattaraugus County led by Tim Baird, an exceptional birder and naturalist. It was another lovely day weather-wise in Western New York and the group got to enjoy a lot of warblers in the Red House Lake area. The most vocal and significant warbler was the Northern Parula, an intriguing find in terms of a nesting species as several pairs were...
Read MoreBird Fest 2014 day 1
This is the first of two blog posts on RTPI’s Bird Fest 2014 which took place on Friday, June 6 and Saturday, June 7. The first day featured two excursions focused on wetlands and grasslands. The wetlands stop took us to Akeley Swamp Important Bird Area just south of the New York-Pennsylvania border in Pine Grove Township, Warren County for a walk led by Don Watts. As you can see our morning fog lifted out and revealed a perfect June day. This afforded us a lot of good viewing opportunities and a chance to conduct rail callback surveys via my iPhone – we had Virginia Rails and a...
Read MoreRTPI Bird Fest 2014
Thanks to all who joined us for RTPI Bird Fest 2014! All four excursions featured some lovely surprises and great company. This shot of some of our group yesterday morning at Akeley Swamp IBA shows RTPI President Twan Leenders pointing and trip leader Don Watts scoping, perhaps at the recently hatched Hooded Mergansers we observed. Special thanks to Don, Jim Berry, Tim Baird and Terry Mosher for giving us their time and knowledge to lead the trips. We’ll show you our finds and photos this week…
Read MorePassenger Pigeons and Bird Fest 2014
One hundred years ago this year, Martha – the last of the Passenger Pigeons – died at the Cincinnati Zoo. This may once have been the most abundant bird in North America but was effectively extinct in the wild around the turn of the 20th century with only few sad survivors remaining in captivity. Roger Tory Peterson never saw one in the wild but did illustrate the species for his first guide in 1934. As was the case with most of his illustrations he used museum specimens as models. Twan took the following photos of the Passenger Pigeon mount and study skins, Meet Your Neighbours...
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