Boston Flora

Tag: Scott Weidensaul

  • Saturday, February 4, 11:00 am – 12:15 pm – The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds, Online

    Even as scientists make discoveries about navigational and physiological feats that enable migratory birds to cross immense oceans or fly above the highest mountains, go weeks without sleep or remain in unbroken flight for months, humans have brought many migratory birds to the brink. Based on his bestselling new book A World on the Wing, author and researcher Scott Weidensaul takes attendees around the globe — with researchers in the lab probing the limits of what migrating birds can do, to the shores of the Yellow Sea in China, the remote mountains of northeastern India where tribal villages saved the greatest gathering of falcons on the planet, and the Mediterranean, where activists and police are battling bird poachers — to learn how people are fighting to understand and save the world’s great bird migrations.

    Scott Weidensaul is the author of nearly 30 books on natural history, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist Living on the Wind. Weidensaul is a contributing editor for Audubon and writes for a variety of other publications, including Living Bird. He is a Fellow of the American Ornithological Society and an active field researcher, studying saw-whet owl migration for more than two decades, as well as winter hummingbirds in the East, bird migration in Alaska, and the winter movements of snowy owls through Project SNOWstorm, which he co-founded. A native of Pennsylvania, he and his wife now life in New Hampshire.

    This Mt. Cuba Center program takes place online Saturday, February 4, 2023. $25. Register at https://mtcubacenter.org/event/the-global-odyssey/

  • Wednesday, September 23, 10:00 am – Birds of Two Worlds

    The Birds & Beansâ„¢ story began in Toronto in 1998 when Madeleine and David Pritchard opened their Café and Roastery – serving only ‘Bird Friendly’® coffee. Ten years later Scott Weidensaul (Pulitzer prize finalist author and naturalist, ‘Living on the Wind’, ‘Of a Feather’) and Bill Wilson took up the cause to shift coffee drinking behavior of bird lovers in New England and New York.  Bill’s Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center (SMBC) ‘Bird Friendly’® certification means that Birds & Beans â„¢ coffee is 100%-organic shade-grown, ensuring the conservation of migratory bird habitat in Latin America. Tanagers, thrushes, orioles, warblers, oven-birds and other wonderful birds nesting in Northeast America find sanctuary in the rustic canopy, rain forest-like environments of family coffee farms that carry the SMBC certification. Sun grown coffee – genetically modified and heavily dependent on chemical fertilization, pesticides and herbicides – adds to the destruction of critical bird habitat in Latin America. ‘Birds & Beans the good coffee’ â„¢ is part of the solution. He wants to help add thousands of hectares of shade grown, organic coffee habitat to the farms already producing a truly sustainable and environmentally responsible crop.

    The Birds & Beans team has grown to include three ‘ Voices for the Birds‘ – authors, naturalists, educators and conservationists. Kenn Kaufman (‘Kingbird Highway’, Kaufman Field Guide series) and Bridget Stutchbury (‘Silence of Songbirds’, Professor and Director of The Stutchbury Lab at York University, Toronto) have joined Scott Weidensaul in getting the word out about The Good Coffee. Kenn, Bridget and Scott are touring New England and New York in 2009 and 2010 for The Birds & Beans Talks â„¢, a series of free lectures about the birds we know and love and how our lives and theirs are inexorably connected.   An optional lunch with our speaker will follow the Garden Club of the Back Bay  meeting, which will take place at The College Club, 44 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston.  Guests welcome. Pre-registration required.  Luncheon is $19 per person.  For additional information, email info@bostonflora.com.

    http://10000birds.com//srv/htdocs/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/coffee-toucanet.jpg

  • Thursday, July 17, 5 pm – Flight Path Exhibit, 7 pm – Living on the Wind: The World of Migratory Birds

    Plymouth Beach is part of the breathtaking panorama seen from Plimoth Plantation. Few visitors know that this beautiful shoreline plays a crucial role in a complex and ancient system of shorebird migration routes running from the tip of South America to the Arctic tundra. In addition to the threatened and endangered species that breed and nest on this local barrier beach, more than 20,000 migratory birds use the bay as a fuel stop.

    Eighty-five striking images by nature photographer Jim Fenton provide a close-up of coastal water bird life to reveal their beauty and behavior. The exhibit was developed in partnership with the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, Goldenrod Foundation and Massachusetts Audubon Society, and produced with generous financial support from the Bobolink Foundation, Goldenrod Foundation, Sheehan Family Foundation and others.

    At any moment of every day, migratory birds fill the skies of the western hemisphere, journeying from the High Arctic to Tierra del Fuego, across the Atlantic and Pacific, moving by day and night.  Join naturalist and author Scott Weidensaul on an exploration of how and why birds migrate, and the conservation challenges that face them, based on his book, Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds.  The program ranges from the doorstep of the Aleutians in Alaska and the frozen edge of Hudson Bay in Canada to landscapes as exotic as the grassy pampas of Argentina, and as familiar as the barrier islands of the Massachusetts coast.  A presentation filled with the drama of this remarkable phenomenon awaits.  No reservation needed.  Members of Plimoth Plantation $6.50, non-members $8.50.  Flight Path: Plymouth Beach will be open free of charge from 5 pm to 7 pm to all current members of Mass Audubon, Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, and Goldenrod Foundation members.

    For directions to Plimoth Plantation and more information, log on to www.plimoth.org.