Avian Ecologist

Why is Color Our 1st Instinct for ID?

One of my first “slap on the wrists” as a birder was to look at color last, whereas it seems we want to look at it first. Why is that? Our processing of color begins in the retina, whereas we don’t process form of what we’re looking at until the visual cortex! “Many cells in V1 […]

What I’ve Learned About Teaching

I haven’t had extensive classroom teaching experience yet: I TA’ed forestry practicum twice over the summer at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and TA’ed 2 sections of introductory astronomy lab when I was an undergrad. My students helped teach me how to helpfully communicate new concepts, and a few ubiquitous patterns played out, such as: you always get […]

The Steps to Getting Started Birding

Just look/listen from your window, deck, backyard, etc.! Notice birds you see around you. Take note of what you can identify and what you can’t (sights and sounds) and let your curiosity drive you to investigate. Get a good field guide and study up! Learn what’s around you by looking at seasonality and range maps. […]

Learning to use Google Earth Engine

I’m poking my way around Google Earth Engine and seeing what’s here, as well as learning some basics of the web IDE. They have image and feature collections, accessible through functions… ImageCollection() FeatureCollection() You can pass the name of a collection to FeatureCollection() to query it. Sometimes these are actually Fusion Tables. It’s kind of […]

My Experiences as a Student

This is my processing of what I’ve experienced, having been a professional, full-time student until last year, when I finished my Ph.D. at 29. At this point, I’ve sat in classrooms much more than I’ve been in front of them, and I can perhaps illustrate the brokenness of the curriculum/semester/grading/course scheme best through my experience […]

Recommendations for Birding Gear

I was heartened to see that even Popular Mechanics is getting into birding in their own way, but I wanted to make a few tweaks to this list, as, well, a birder! Here are some additional or alternative things to consider purchasing for your birding ventures… spotting scope: I have a Swarovski 80mm ATS angled spotting […]

My Journey Looking Through Binoculars

In the many articles I see out there on how to get started birding, they talk about essential optics, so I thought I’d share my journey through binocular ownership. We had an old pair of binoculars at my home, that I would use to occasionally look at birds and other things outside. When I took […]

Watching Birds: My Early Experiences

My Story I didn’t really know a lot about birds when I was young beyond what my dad taught me from our backyard feeders, but for whatever weird reason, I tried to memorize our old Audubon guide when I was little. I was never sure of my knowledge, though, without a true birding mentor. Maybe […]

How to Get Involved in Birding through Clubs

Here’s a guide to organizations I’ve personally interacted with and would recommend (though I know of several others in nearby locations and am happy to recommend if you leave a comment). This is where you can meet up with birders, find guided walks/events and other local birding information. Mid-Atlantic Howard County Bird Club Delmarva Birding […]

Connectivity for Re-analysis of “Ch. 3”

Today we started playing around with some options for doing a connectivity analysis. We’re converting a raster to polygon to facilitate constructing a network.