This course has four, major foci: development of your ability to identify birds, expansion of your understanding of the factors that are changing the abundance of bird populations including population regulation, and knowledge about avian conservation efforts including human impact on natural habitat, insecticides, federal legislation, population restoration and the impact of cultural values. In addition, a major goal of this course is to provide a foundation for enjoying birds throughout your life.

TEXTS:

•  Frank Gill. Ornithology

 A comprehensive field guides for birds of North America or North America

List of BIRDS SEEN ON FIELD TRIPS  (Excel file)

PREREQUISITES:

 Students must have a college biology course or a very strong enthusiasm for field studies of birds and a willingness to arrive sober early in the morning on Saturday or Sunday come rain or shine and an ability to hike long distances in rough terrain.

• Two 1-hr written exams on lecture and assigned reading with 80 pts for the lowest exam and 120 pts for the higher grade (22% of grade)
• Four best of six identification exams for 75 pt. each (33%).
• Your written theme and digiscoping images for 100 pt (11%).
• Final exam: 150 pt. on identification and 150 pt. on written material (33%)
• Two 15-pt., 5-min BONUS pop quizzes that start in the first week of class

During our lengthy contact on field trips, behavior should be conducive to a productive learning environment. Extensive drinking the night before field trips is very destructive to the course. Individuals with effects from drinking the night before will not be counted as attending. Disruptive behavior by noise or action during field trips, following repeated comments from me, will be detrimental to your grade.

Attendance at lectures and labs is expected. You can miss two lectures or one lab without penalty. After written warning by me, further absences will reduce your final grade. You can drop one of the field trips, except the trip to Long Island, but additional absences will severely reduce your grade. Some lectures will be reduced in length and some labs will be dropped to compensate for the length of field trips. A few lab periods will used for the normal sort of lab work and several lab periods will also be used as the time for the identification and written exams.

ID questions can include any species on the Start-Up list plus any species discussed or seen during class or on field trips. Emphasis will be placed on birds I see or hear on field trips. Since, I will not shout to convey important information on field trips, it is to your advantage to stay within easy talking distance on field trips. Quizzes may ask you to recognize a bird's song or any plumage of a species. Your field guide is a major tool for learning the identifying field marks of perched or flying birds, and all recognizable plumages for season, or age or sex, and for distinguishing songs and call notes. In previous years, pairs of students shared in buying an extra copy of Birds of North America and used cut-outs to make flash cards as an effective study aid.

ID quizzes will use photos, digital images and sound recordings. Many of these will come from  <http://www.mbr.pwrc.usgs.gov/id/framlst/framlst.html>.  Every ID Question will include:

1. The common name.
2. The Latin or taxonomic name for the family.
3. An "anything goes" question which will utilize observations and discussions during the field trips such as:

• Give an identifying characteristic of the same species but opposite sex or different age from the bird shown here.
• Describe the typical winter food for this species, and how has the supply of the typical winter food changed in the last 20 years?
• Describe the behavior by this species that often is a very good aid for identification.
•  Give the age (or sex) of this bird in banding terminology and describe what feature of the plumage allows you to determine what the age (sex) is?

It is impossible for all members of a class to see each bird equally well. Consequently, there will be a liberal number of bonus questions.

 Although the field trips are concentrated at the start of the semester, half of the points for your grade are acquired at the end of the course. That is, identification skills are learned early in the course, but graded material is submitted later.

NB. Field trips will leave promptly. My comments during field trips about bird populations and ecology are part of the course and may be included on the identification quizzes.

The schedule for Field Ornithology is extremely unusual. Field trips will take us to where the birds are and we will stay there long enough to have a good chance to see a large variety of species. Consequently, Field Ornithology has 8 weekend field trips. Five of these go from 5 or 6 or 7 AM to ~3:30 PM. One of the eight trips is a major, 3-day weekend trip to Long Island.  The three-day trip to Long Island: from Friday (perhaps leaving at 7:00 AM to visit Queen’s Zoo if your schedules permit, "Yom Kippur", or later in the day) to 5 PM Sunday, 24-26 September is mandatory.  The field trips are concentrated into the first part of the semester because migration of most shorebirds and small land birds peaks in August and September. There are far fewer field trips later in the semester when work load for other courses usually peaks. The time commitment for field trips for the first part of the semester is very demanding, but this is the only way to see a great variety of birds, which is a great pleasure for me and hopefully for you, also. If this schedule seems too much for you, then please drop this course now. Field trips will require hiking in all sorts of weather on rocky, sandy, wet and uneven terrain.

During the 3-day trip to Long Island we may visit the Queen's Zoo with the opportunity to see avian care, if we can leave early in the morning, in addition to touring several wildlife refuges. Our trip is timed to see falcon migration along the outer beaches of Fire Island. We will see more bird species during this three-day trip than on the rest of the trips combined. If anyone has a good idea about sleeping arrangements on Long Island, please let me know.

About clothing. On every trip, you must have shoes that will comfortably get you through mud and shallow, standing water. During earlier trips and especially on the trip to Long Island you may want sun screen and shade hats. During later trips, especially to Lake Ontario shoreline you will want winter clothes and boots. You must have hiking boots because we will venture out into some very wet and cold locations.

 For this course you will write a ~500 word text on some ornithological theme. This will be supplemented by your original, digital images and images from other sources presented in PowerPoint. Some of these images must be obtained with a digital camera with and without attachment to a scope. Your theme might be the sequence of plumages of molting mallard, or, management of game birds, or, nesting by pigeons. or the bird species that occur at a particular site. Look at the following web sites to see what you can do with digiscoping. The first site describes digiscoping as a hobby.  <http://www.birdingamerica.com/Digiscoped/digiscopinglinks.htm>.  The next two sites, created by Dr. Kevin McGowan of Cornell, illustrate the use of digiscoping for academic and scientific purposes, i.e., more than pretty pictures. The first describes how to identify two, very similar species of meadowlarks using digiphotos of museum specimens and digiscoping images of a Western Meadowlark seen near Dryden, a very rare species in New York.  <http://birds.cornell.edu/crows/wmeadowlrk.htm> The second McGowan link uses a variety of digiscope images to document and identify rare birds and to provide educational material. <http://birds.cornell.edu/crows/brdphoto.htm>  Your digiscope images, including at least 6 original images, will supplement be accompanied by a written description about the digital image and the ecology or behavior of the depicted species and situation and the environmental factors that might influence the bird(s) that is digitized. If you can compile a very good set of digital images, we might link your results to my home web page. Details will be provided soon.