Roger Tory Peterson’s Methods, Media and Models
This article by Jordan Patterson, appeared in the February 28th, 2019 edition of the Post-Journal. Roger Tory Peterson passed away in 1996, but his catalog of paintings, photography and overall work with birds continued to impact Jefferson Middle School (Jamestown, NY) students Wednesday (February 27th). In two separate sessions, Lisa Corey, Jefferson art teacher, and her fifth- and sixth- grade students welcomed in representatives from the Roger Tory Peterson Institute to display past work from the founder organization. The RTPI program is titled “Roger Tory Peterson’s Methods, Media and...
Read MoreHelp Museums
Are you a local friend in Chautauqua County or Western New York who wants to support the Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History and similar museums? Please consider emailing our New York State Senator Cathy Young and New York State Assemblyman Andy Goodell asking for their support on the Museum Education Act. Why? Currently, New York museums are the only chartered entities that receive no direct funding from the Education Department that charters them. This bill would help museums continue and expand their curriculum-based educational programming and also help school districts and...
Read MoreStudents Learn that Roger Tory Peterson is “For the Birds”
He was born in Jamestown, New York more than one hundred years ago. Imagine that city one hundred years ago; no television, no computers or any of the many electronic devices that amuse us today, not even cars to take us to entertaining places like shopping malls or sports events. What would a boy like Roger do during summer vacation? “Go outside and look at nature”, answer my audience of second grade students at Love Elementary School. It’s a library class so appropriately I show them Laura Thomas’s exquisite illustrations in Peggy Thomas’s children’s biography For the Birds, The Life of...
Read MoreRusty Blackbird Fact Sheet
Are you a leader of an Audubon chapter, nature center, land trust or other area where the public can enjoy birds and wildlife? If so, I am hoping you would be so kind as to distribute and/or post the below two-page informational document about the Rusty Blackbird and the Rusty Blackbird International Working Group’s upcoming Spring Migration Blitz for your visitors. You can also download it here. I am the statewide Connecticut coordinator for the Rusty Blackbird Spring Migration Blitz, running from March through mid-June across the continent and focused in Connecticut from...
Read MorePreventing window strikes
As we hit mid-October we enter a period with southbound migration still in full swing, certain species irrupting (Blue Jays and Purple Finches this year!) or making nomadic movements (Pine Siskin or Northern Saw-whet Owl anyone?) and a lot of birds beginning to visit feeding stations. It is an exciting time as backyard bird watchers start to spot what mix of species will be staking claim to winter territory in their yards. Unfortunately this time of year can still be very active in a negative way: window strikes. Birds on the wing in migratory movements face a fatal fate many times more...
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