Cape Cod Bird Club Meetings

Monthly meetings are held on the second Monday of every month at 7:30 p.m. from September through May at the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History, 869 Rte. 6A, in Brewster, MA. Our meetings are free and open to the public.

January 9, 2012

Peter Trull - “Symbiosis in Humpback Whales and Marine Birds.”

The open sea is a wild place! Humpback Whales feed voraciously on small fish, predominantly sand lance, as they compete with several predatory fish and other whales. Shearwaters and Gulls benefit from the dynamic bubble and lunge feeding of the whales. In this program, Peter will show us, and explain through vivid photographs and years of personal experience, the symbiotic relationship between these marine mammals and pelagic birds. Peter will sign copies of his new book, An Illustrated Guide to the Common Birds of Cape Cod after his program. Please come and bring a friend.

Peter Trull, a past president of the CCBC, has been involved in research and education for about 30 years. From 1976 to 1986, he coordinated Mass Audubon's coastal seabird monitoring program and conducted research in Guyana and Surinam, studying the market trapping of Common Terns and Roseate Terns (ask him what he ate!). As Education Director and Senior Field Naturalist at the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History, he developed programs and began studying Eastern Coyotes in 1989. Through the 90's, as a researcher and Education Director at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, he developed and taught classes related to whales and marine ecosystems and completed over 1,400 whale watching trips related to education and research. He presently teaches 7th grade Science at the Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School in Orleans. He has written several books about Cape Cod natural history and is currently conducting long term research on Eastern Coyotes. He also received a grant to study the Fisher with his students on cape cod.

February 13, 2012

Brad Winn - “Listening to Shorebirds: Finding Critical Migration Sites Using Improved Technologies”

We learn almost from the time we can walk that birds are fundamentally different from us – because they can fly without buying an airplane ticket. But where do they go, and how can we help protect those places that are so critical to the birds' survival. This presentation will show how tracking individual, large-bodied shorebirds can “tell” us where the important stop-over and wintering sites are for these and other hemispheric travelers. Recent studies in the migration ecology of American Oystercatcher, Marbled Godwit, and Whimbrel will be discussed in terms of setting conservation priorities in the Western Hemisphere for these incredible birds.

Brad Winn worked for the state of Georgia for 17 years as a coastal biologist for the Nongame Conservation Section before joining the staff of the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences as a Conservation Specialist in March 2011. In Georgia, he oversaw a wide range of projects focused on protecting and recovering depleted populations of native wildlife such as the North Atlantic right whale, local loggerhead turtle populations, American Wood Stork and Swallow-tailed Kite. He also was involved with mapping and classifying all of the natural communities of Georgia’s Coastal Counties. Brad’s relationship with Manomet began in the late 1990’s when he collaborated on a study of a Red Knot fall staging event at the mouth of Georgia's Altamaha River. That and other related work lead to the establishment of the 40th Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network site and designation as a nationally significant Important Bird Area. Brad is now working with Manomet’s Shorebird Recovery Project on several initiatives and research projects to reverse recent declines in shorebirds of the Atlantic Flyway.

March 12, 2012

The Cape Cod Osprey Project: Voyeuristic Citizen Science - Mark Faherty, Science Coordinator, Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary

The Cape Cod Osprey project started at Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary with a small network of telephone informants reporting on the productivity of their local osprey nests, mainly on the Outer Cape. The project has since grown into a network of over 70 volunteers helping to map and monitor nests from Wellfleet to Falmouth. Volunteers use Google Earth to map nests, and then monitor them periodically to note the timing of important events in the nesting cycle such as the initiation of incubation, hatch date, and ultimately the number of chicks successfully fledged from each nest. The project has shed light on this previously mysterious population of ospreys and allowed comparisons with better studied populations on the Westport River and on Martha’s Vineyard. We also satellite tracked a juvenile Eastham Osprey named Goody Hallet on her southward migration from Cape Cod to South America, with many wacky stops in between, and her travels will be detailed in this talk. Perhaps most importantly, we’ve engaged an ever-growing corps of citizen scientists in tracking a species whose fate is directly linked with the health of our coastal ecosystems.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION: Mark Faherty has been the Science Coordinator at Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary since August 2007 and President of Cape Cod Bird Club since 2009. While his current projects involve everything from oysters and horseshoe crabs to bats and butterflies, he has studied primarily bird ecology for the last 16 years, working on research projects in Texas, Florida, California, Arizona, Mexico, the Pacific Northwest, and the Cape Cod National Seashore. He appreciates the osprey project because it allows him to keep one wing in the ornithological world while also taking credit for work done primarily by other, unpaid people.

Dates of speakers are subject to change, please check latest newsletter and our website.