"Bird Monitoring Programs: How scientists track bird populations and how this applies to conservation in North Texas" with Blaine Carnes
Ornithologists estimate that the total population of birds in North America has decreased by more than one-third over the last 55 years. To help monitor these population declines, determine their causes, and hopefully reverse them, researchers safely capture and tag birds with markers called bands. Bands are small metal bracelets that go around a bird’s leg, and each band has a unique ID number so that scientists can recognize individual birds when or if they capture them again. Being able to recognize different individual birds allows scientists to estimate total bird numbers at a location, as well as letting them determine demographic data such as the ratios of males to females and older birds to younger birds.
Another way to estimate bird populations and movement is through the use of Audio Recording Units. Recording units are placed in a space and monitored during a chosen season to determine what birds may be in residence.
Join Ornithologist Blaine Carnes for a fascinating look at different bird monitoring programs and how retrieved data applies to conservation efforts.
Blaine Carnes is an ornithologist who works with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as the Merlin Sound ID project coordinator for the US and Canada. He has been extensively involved in bird population monitoring projects over the past 17 years, with significant time spent working with the Institute for Bird Populations and their collaborators on the MAPS and MoSI banding programs, as well as spending two years at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s Powdermill Avian Research Center. Additionally, he has been a team lead at several bird migration study sites and has accumulated almost four years of field experience in Central and South America on a variety of ornithological research. He currently runs a bird monitoring program with study sites at Trinity River Audubon Center and John Bunker Sands Wetland Center, and the acoustic monitoring program for Golden-cheeked Warblers at Dogwood Canyon Audubon Center.
Attendees will receive a ticket for one adult beverage (21 and up), light snacks and 20% off select items in the gift shop.Tickets are $10 minimum donation. We greatly appreciate any gift above this amount to support our mission of protecting birds and the places they need, today and tomorrow.
Photo by Sydney Walsh, Beidler Forest Sanctuary