An Historic Collaboration for Birds on Hispaniola
An historic collaboration between Haiti and the Dominican Republic promises to build a better future for bird conservation on Hispaniola.
Mountain Birds and Jail Birds: Another Season of Mountain Birdwatch
Trees fall over trails. Bridges wash out. Gullies form and block routes. During Mountain Birdwatch, these are trivialities … compared to a couple of escaped convicts.
Streamertails and Jamaica – VCE Attends BirdsCaribbean Meeting
VCE played a prominent role in the recent BirdsCaribbean meeting on Jamaica. The five-day conference also afforded a chance to see 20 of Jamaica’s 30 endemic birds.
Illegal Deforestation Continues in the Dominican Republic
Sierra de Bahoruco National Park is a vital haven for some of the rarest endemic birds in the Caribbean Basin. But its cloud-forest habitat is being illegally logged and cleared for crops. And conservationists say the government of the Dominican Republic is doing little to stop it.
Summer Banding on Mansfield Ends with a Flourish
VCE’s July 20-21 Mt. Mansfield banding session capped another productive field season, our 24th studying the ridgeline’s breeding bird community. After several weeks that brought record rainfall to the mountain,…
Record Rains on Mansfield Fail to Deter Birds or Humans
June’s record 16-inch rainfall on Mt. Mansfield didn’t deter VCE biologists or our hardy visiting friends. The past two weeks brought enthusiasts from Puerto Rico, England, Ireland and New England to experience firsthand a Bicknell’s Thrush up close and personal.
Bicknell Legacy Shines on Mt. Mansfield
This past Tuesday, exactly one day after the 134th anniversary of Eugene Bicknell’s landmark discovery, a fifth generation descendant, Edward “Teddy” Bicknell Doggett, joined VCE staff on Mansfield, with his grandparents Gene and Nina Doggett. It didn’t take long for Teddy’s indoctrination into BITHnology to occur.
Bicknell’s Sing Up a Storm on Mt. Mansfield
Imagine being on Vermont’s tallest peak at 9:30 pm on a clear, cool evening without a whisper of wind. Sunset’s faint after-glow still peeks from the western horizon, while a moon just past full rises bright orange to the east, over the Worcester range.
Scientists Combine Bird Survey Data to Identify Vulnerable Songbirds
Mountain Birdwatch data lie at the heart of a published study revealing that continent-wide bird surveys may offer important conservation insights, but they can miss rare or isolated species whose habitat lies off the beaten path, such as at high elevations or in remote bogs.
Judith Scarl Migrates Southward
For the past five and a half years, Judith Scarl has been a mainstay of VCE’s conservation biology staff. Now, she’s moving on, leaving the Green Mountains to try her hand on the bigger bird conservation stage in Washington, DC. It’s an understatement to say that we’ll miss Jude, and that she has left a lasting mark here.
A Field Guide to June
Here in Vermont, we dream of June during the darkest days of January. Verdant wooded hillsides glowing brightly under a robin egg sky. We forget about the clouds of black flies, the hum of the mosquitos and the rainy days. June is a dream here. Its days last forever.
The Invisible Boundaries of Sierra de Bahoruco National Park
Recently, journalists and photographers used a new generation drone that gave them impressive bird’s-eye view of the same sites they visited on foot two years ago when they first exposed the deforestation happening within the national park.
