Notes From the Field: Felicity Arengo

Tuesday, September 21 10:05 am

Blogging from Argentina, Felicity Arengo (Associate Director of the Museum’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation) is counting flamingos. Andean flamingos leave their high-altitude lakes and disperse, among other places, to the cattle lands and soy farms of Argentina’s “pampas,” or fertile lowlands, for winter. Arengo and her colleagues have found numerous wintering sites over the last few years and are working to coordinate efforts to protect these birds from habitat destruction due to roads, mining, and agricultural practices, among other factors.

August 24

Photo courtesy of Felicity Arengo

We’ve now surveyed 14 lakes and will circle back to Melincué to survey the lake there and check on Nancy Cruz and Victor Torres. Both are advanced undergraduate students that are camping in the wetlands to gather data on flamingos for Nancy’s thesis. We stopped by to check in with Sánchez, the caretaker of the ranch along the lake where we’ve set up the students’ camp. He treats us to some mate, an infusion of dry yerba leaves sipped from a shared hollow gourd through a metal straw, while his wife Estela takes a break from ironing clothes to stoke the fireplace as the temperatures have dropped to 50 degrees, still above average.

When we began working at this site 13 years ago, we spoke with many of the landowners in the area to explain the project and garner support, and also to request permission to access sites on their properties. Support from local stakeholders is essential to our goal to conserve the wetlands, the wildlife, and the ecosystem services that support economic development. This expedition has been fruitful in that regard, as we’ve come across several local people with the same interest. A landowner stopped by to chat with us as we surveyed a wetland from the roadside and offered access through his property; a teenager working at the bakery said his youth group would be interested in helping with fieldwork; a beekeeper, concerned for his livelihood, is interested in maintaining traditional economic opportunities that are more ecologically sustainable. Read more »

Notes From the Field: Felicity Arengo

Thursday, September 09 9:25 am

Blogging from Argentina, Felicity Arengo (Associate Director of the Museum’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation) is counting flamingos. Andean flamingos leave their high-altitude lakes and disperse, among other places, to the cattle lands and soy farms of Argentina’s “pampas,” or fertile lowlands, for winter. Arengo and her colleagues have found numerous wintering sites over the last few years and are working to coordinate efforts to protect these birds from habitat destruction due to roads, mining, and agricultural practices, among other factors.

August 20, 2010

Photo courtesy of Felicity Arengo

The day began in my hometown, Rosario, Argentina, with my colleague Marcelo Romano and two students sorting through the gear we’ve gathered for our expedition. We stacked food coolers, rubber boots, and camping equipment on top of the Jeep. Inside we neatly packed our spotting scopes, computers, GPS, and other sensitive equipment. Marcelo and I are conducting a winter flamingo census in several wetlands nestled within Argentina’s primary agricultural zone.

It is winter here and up until last week, temperatures were well below freezing so I’ve come prepared with several wool and fleece layers, a couple of sleeping bags, hats, gloves, and scarves. But today seems almost like a spring day.

This winter census complements a comprehensive, simultaneous flamingo census that was performed in January this year, coordinated by the Grupo Conservacion Flamencos Altoandinos (GCFA). Of the six flamingo species worldwide, three are found in the Southern Cone. The Chilean Flamingo has a broad distribution throughout the region while the Andean Flamingo and Puna Flamingo are more restricted to wetlands in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru. Our counts focus on the latter two species; whose population numbers are cause for concern. With global population estimates at around 35,000, the Andean Flamingo is the rarest in the world, meriting its listing as one of the few foreign species in the US Endangered Species Act.

Photo courtesy of Marcelo Romano

Since 1997, the GCFA, an international initiative of scientists and conservationists, has been coordinating research and conservation activities focused on flamingos and their wetland habitats. The comprehensive censuses are key and involve dozens of trained volunteers simultaneously setting out to reach as many wetlands within the flamingo range as possible within a week’s time. After establishing a baseline with the first-ever reliable estimates of Andean and Puna Flamingo populations in the first few years, the group has since done two follow-up censuses in 2005 and early this year to track population trends. One important aspect we discovered early on is that the Andean Flamingo, originally thought to be relatively restricted to high altitude wetlands of the Andes, actually comes down from the mountains during winter months, particularly if the Andean wetlands freeze, to use the lowland wetlands of the Argentinean pampas. In the past five years or so, we have begun to realize the true importance of these wetlands in the Andean Flamingo’s life cycle. Read more »

Looking Up in Central Park: Museum-Led Bird Walks Start in September

Thursday, August 26 4:01 pm

There’s no better way to celebrate fall than to observe bird migration on an eight-week series of walks through Central Park with Museum naturalists Stephen C. Quinn, Joseph DiCostanzo, and Harold Feinberg. Leading groups of up to 25 birders, these experienced tour guides teach participants to use field marks, habitat, behavior, and song to identify birds. Check out a video of a bird walk led by Stephen Quinn below.

Biodiversity at ID Day: Birds

Friday, May 14 2:53 pm

White-browed Piculet. Courtesy of Paul Sweet.

Red-Winged Laughingthrush. Courtesy of Paul Sweet.

This year, as Museum scientists attempt to identify visitors’ shells, rocks, insects, feathers, bones, and more on Identification Day (May 22), there will also be an opportunity to celebrate the International Year of Biodiversity while learning more about the Museum’s collections.

These collections—a key record of the diversity of life housed in the Museum’s science divisions—will take center stage at talks by several scientists, who will also discuss how threats to different species affect ecosystems around the world.

Among those presenting will be Paul Sweet, an ornithologist whose research focuses on bird species from Southeast Asia. Sweet recently shared some thoughts about the biggest threats facing the species he studies and the importance of the Museum’s collections.

What are the greatest conservation threats to birds­ and, more specifically, to birds you have worked with or will discuss on May 22?

Logging of forests is by far the greatest threat to birds in Southeast Asia. Logging occurs for two main reasons: commercial and local exploitation of timber and conversion of land to agriculture, either for cash crops or local subsistence. Vietnam has experienced dramatic population growth and economic development in recent years, which has been accompanied by an equally dramatic loss of forest as demand for food and timber rises. Many of Vietnam’s 850 species of birds, the most in mainland Southeast Asia, are completely dependent on forests for their existence. New bird species are still being found, but the threat to this biodiversity hotspot is very real.

Is there a threat that is less commonly understood, and do you have an example?

Exploitation of certain species for traditional Asian medicine can have severe local effects. There’s also exploitation of wildlife for food, for subsistence but also in luxury wildlife food restaurants. The pet trade is another important threat, particularly to birds.

How are the Museum’s collections,­ and especially the new additions to the collections, used to understand more about biodiversity?

Collections are documents of biodiversity. Every specimen is a data point explaining the geographic and temporal occurrence of the species. Without existing collections we would not be able to identify new species. The Museum’s ornithology collections are the largest in the world, with 850,000 specimens, and they are available to scientists worldwide by loan and visit. Data is also available to researchers online. And it’s not only ornithologists who use our collection. Comparative collections are used in many kinds of studies, from archaeology to paleontology. Authors and artists of field guides also use our collections for their work.

Artist David Sibley Discusses Bright Wings Illustrations

Thursday, March 04 9:15 am

Artist David Allen Sibley will be a featured speaker at Art/Sci Collision: Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds at the Museum on March 10.  He recently answered some questions about his contribution to the anthology.

Are you, and have you always been, a bird watcher?

Yes, I guess so – at least as long as I can remember. I started keeping a bird list when I was seven, but I had started drawing birds a few years before that as soon as I could draw. My father’s an ornithologist, so the house was filled with books about birds, and I used to trace and copy pictures out of those books. Then on weekends I remember going out on hikes and picnics, and having my father and his friends pointing out birds, snakes, insects, and everything else. I was interested in all of it but birds quickly became my primary interest and have always held a special place.

Do you sketch from live models, or do you have another method of illustrating?

I sketch live birds in the wild as much as possible. I spend a lot of time out with binoculars and telescope, just watching, and I manage to get some snippets of that on paper and use those experiences as inspiration. I think my time in the field is the most important element of any painting, and my goal is always to try to paint what the bird looks like through binoculars, the way a birder would see it. Once I’m back in my studio I pull out all of my field sketches and notes, and collections of photographs, and choose the pose I want to show.

Is there a species that is particularly challenging to capture?

One of the most difficult groups for me to draw has always been the herons and egrets. They look so elegant and graceful at a distance, but the closer you get the more angular, bony, prehistoric and almost grotesque they look. So to do a drawing that “looks right” you have to take the close-up details and smooth them into the elegant lines you would see at a distance, but it’s not real, it’s a blend. Just drawing the shapes is challenging enough, but finding the right blend of details and impressions is even more difficult.

How do illustrations work with the poems in Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds?

I’ve always been fascinated by how pictures and words work together, and that interaction is a really important part of how my books are structured. Poetry can evoke such strong feelings and images in our minds, it would be easy for a painting to conflict with that, in the same way that we recoil when the hero in a movie doesn’t look the way we pictured them from the book. My illustrations in this book are without much of a narrative and leave out lots of details that the viewer can fill in. They’re just portraits of the birds, so hopefully the reader can easily merge the image with the story being told in the poem. I think this works much better than if I had tried to “interpret” the poem and paint my personal vision of the poet’s work.