THIS MEETING IS CANCELED
Host:
Patuxent Bird Club/PGAS
Description:
Birding Ecuador, presented by Jane and Fred Fallon. While further afield than Costa Rica or Panama as a neotropical birding destination, Ecuador is becoming increasingly popular with North American birders. One of South America’s smaller countries, it is nonetheless larger than the UK; about the size of Colorado. Within that area is a wide variety of habitat, a consequence of the Andes Mountains bisecting the country and creating distinct zones of high and low altitude, and wet and dry, forest – including a good chunk of Amazonian rainforest. As a result, the country’s species list is over 1,600 (of which 200 are migrants from North America), comparing favorably with such giants as Colombia and Venezuela. In this talk, examples of native species will be illustrated, with emphasis on the different families represented and their relation to habitat regions. Interspersed, we’ll cover living conditions, infrastructure, and tips on travel.
About the Presenters: Jane Fallon was raised in Northern Lower Michigan, in the resort town of Petoskey on the shores of Lake Michigan. She earned a BS at Michigan State University and an MS in Mathematics at The Ohio State University. After working in Chicago for a couple of years she moved to Maryland. She likes to be outside whether birding, botanizing, hiking, kayaking, or gardening. She retired from Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in 2013.
Fred’s educational background is in astronomy, optics, and statistics; with a bit of aeronomy and geophysics. He has a PhD in astronomy from U Fla.; has done research at U. of S. Fla, Goddard SFC, and NOAA. He is a native of this area, raised in Silver Spring (and Selby Bay near Edgewater during summers) where he started birding at age 14, and got really serious about 40 years ago after joining MOS and PGAS. In more recent years he has become active in bird conservation, once leading MD Partners in Flight Habitat Committee where he was proud to have helped write the ground-breaking manual “Habitat Management Guidelines for the Benefit of Land Birds in Maryland” in collaboration with great regional experts. While on a PGAS canoe trip Fred met future wife Jane. Since then they’ve birded together for over 30 years and been active in our Patuxent chapter. They’ve been happy taking a few excursions far afield such as this trip to Ecuador.
Free and open to the public.
