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 corvidc...@aol.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. 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