Bird Bling: How Banding Birds Helps Conservation

Illustrated talk by seabird biologist Adam DiNuovo

Hosted by HLFM director Pierce Rafferty

In this illustrated talk, Adam DiNuovo will show how banding reveals the remarkable lives of birds and helps in nationwide conservation efforts. He will use birds from all over the US as examples, including two species nesting in the northeast.

The naturalist and writer Peter Matthiessen expressed his love for shorebirds and the natural world in general through the many books and articles he penned over the course of his life. In his 1967 book, “The Wind Birds: Shorebirds of North America”, he wrote:

The restlessness of shorebirds, their kinship with the distance and swift seasons, the wistful signal of their voices down the long coastlines of the world make them, for me, the most affecting of wild creatures. I think of them as birds of wind, as ‘wind birds.’

It’s a beautiful passage, and I’m sure that Matthiessen’s love for shorebirds is shared by many of you. It is certainly shared by seabird biologist Adam DiNuovo.

DiNuovo has been working with seabirds and shorebirds for the last 20 years and his projects have included studies of Least Terns in California, Piping Plover in the Gulf of Mexico, and American Oystercatchers in Virginia.  He is currently working with seabirds in the Gulf of Maine.