D.F.O. Monthly Meeting
A Meeting/A Field Trip:
DMNS Behind the Scenes...
Monday, March 28, 2011
Denver Museum of Nature and Science
7:30 p.m.
DFO is all about field trips! We offer two free birding field trips
a week about fifty weeks a year. We don’t know of any other organization
in the country that offers this quantity and quality of free trips year round
(if you are acquainted with a group that does please let us know).
So it is no surprise that as a part of the stellar lineup of
presentations DFO vice president Lynn Willcockson has offered in the 2010/2011
birding season he has included a field trip, an unusual field trip. As with
all
DFO field trips there will be good companionship AND some surprises. This
field trip will begin as all our monthly meetings do, at 7:30 p.m. in
Ricketson Auditorium at the Museum. After our usual warm up activities emceed
by
DFO president Chuck Thornton-Kolbe, we will depart on a fun-filled,
informative expedition into the halls and corridors of the Denver Museum of
Nature
and Science. This field trip will require NO heavy boots, NO walking
stick, NO telescope, NO backpack, NO sack lunch or water, NO sunscreen... It
is
a simple stroll into the climate controlled “wildlife sanctuary” that is
the DMNS.
The focus of this field trip will be the Denver Museum of Nature and
Science’s Ornithology collection. This collection spans 90+ years and
consists of an ever expanding array of over 43,000 bird study skins and
skeletons, 7,500+ egg sets, 1,200+ nests, bird DNA specimens, bird exo and endo
parasites, a bird tissue collection, and much more. How about having a chance
to see the Museum’s massive Elephant Bird (extinct) egg collected in the 17th
century, or specimens of Carolina Parakeets and Passenger Pigeons? The
Museum’s collection is one of the largest and most important in the Rocky
Mountain Region.
You won’t see all of these, but will see a brief slide show about the
collections, extensive displays from these collections, as well as materials
from the Museum’s Bailey Library and Archives. You may get to compare the
Ivory-billed, Imperial, and Pileated Woodpeckers; view eggs and nests; try
and match study skins with their correct skeletons; study morphological
changes within a specific species which have occurred over a 50 or 60 year
period; read original curator expedition journals or field notes; and maybe
even
examine early ornithological field sketches. Pay attention: there may be a
quiz!
Our expert field trip leaders will be Jeff Stephenson and Andy Doll.
We all know Jeff as the DMNS Zoology Department’s Collections Manager and
liaison to DFO. He is the guy who smiles when one hands him a dead, frozen
bird bagged in plastic. Jeff has worked for the DMNS for 20+ years in many
capacities. He has prepared study skins, dug fossils, and collected dung
beetles. He knows the history and he knows the collection!
Our second leader is Andy Doll who is the Zoology Department’s new
Ornithology Fellow. Andy was introduced to DFO at the January meeting between
the hummingbirds and the gulls. He grew up just outside of Madison,
Wisconsin where he was active in the Boy Scouts with his four older brothers
and
where he developed his interest and appreciation of the outdoors and ecology.
He attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison and got his
undergraduate degree in Wildlife Ecology. He then left Wisconsin for Denver
which
has since been his home base between field jobs. He spent a winter up in
Yellowstone studying coyote behavior and pack dynamics with the Yellowstone
Ecological Research Center. He worked in San Miguel/Montrose counties
monitoring Gunnison Sage Grouse lekking behaviors. He followed that by a
summer
in the Grand Canyon surveying for Southwestern Willow Flycatchers. After
that, Andy spent a summer trapping and tracking Mountain Plovers in southeast
Colorado for the Colorado Division of Wildlife. He then spent four years
working at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal as an Air Monitoring Technician (not
exactly biology, but there were always lots of birds to watch out there).
Currently he is attending the University of Colorado here in Denver pursuing a
master’s degree in the Department of Integrative Biology. His research
focuses on using stable isotope to track resource use in Dunlin. This work
entails summer fieldwork up in Barrow, Alaska with the USFWS where he is
trapping and sampling numerous other shorebird species in addition to Dunlin.
Additionally, he is teaching two general biology labs at UC Denver. His
wife works for DPS at Bruce Randolph school. He has a two year old son who he
spends most of his free time chasing after. He loves to camp, hike, climb
and do just about anything outdoors (birding all of the time, of course)
whenever he can find the time. As the Ornithology Fellow he has already
jumped in and is working on a number of projects in the ornithology collection
such as ground truthing the Museum’s new bird database and developing
ornithology related programming such as this indoor field trip for DFO.
Those of you who participated in the DMNS Zoology Department’s “Brain
Teasers for Bird Brains” program last May will remember how much fun it
was, how informative it was, and how challenging it was. Everyone who
attended came away with new insights into the collections and knowing more
about
the birds we love chasing.
On March 28th bring your binoculars, your hand lenses, your thinking
caps, your comfortable walking shoes and join Jeff and Andy in this fun
indoor Museum field trip experience. The results won’t appear on eBird, but
they will be memorable.
Future Meetings
April 25, 2011
New ABA President - Jeff Gordon
No meeting in May, June, or July 2011
Enjoy our extensive offering of field trips...
Next DFO Meeting is August 22, 2011
Directions
The Denver Field Ornithologists monthly meetings are held in Ricketson
Auditorium at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in City Park. These
meetings are free and open to the public and occur on the 4th Monday of each
month August through April (except December). Park on the north side of the
Museum and walk around and enter through the Museum's west door. Plan to
arrive by 7:15 p.m.; DOORS OPEN BY 7:00 AND ARE LOCKED AT 7:30 P.M. If late,
you can enter through the security/volunteer door, but this does create
problems for our hosts at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
Submitted by Chris A. Blakeslee - DFO Board Member
Centennial, Colorado
[email protected]
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