Celebrating World Migratory Bird Day!

World Migratory Bird Day and Global Big Day are this Saturday, 8 May! We hope you’ll join us in this global celebration to raise awareness about the importance of conserving migratory birds and their habitats. We’ve pulled together a few Wing Beat posts from this past year that highlight research findings from migration-related papers that …

How a labor of love became a multi-decade study of climate and bird dynamics on a historic subalpine Sierra Nevada study site

By Meredith Swett Walker, The Institute for Bird Populations Linked Paper: Climate variation drives dynamics and productivity of a subalpine breeding bird community by David F. DeSante and James F. Saracco, Ornithological Applications Back in the summer of 1977, Dr. David DeSante, then an assistant professor at Reed College, took a group of students to …

Congratulations to the 2021 AOS Student and Postdoc Research Award Winners

AOS is proud to recognize the students and postdoctoral researchers who have been awarded funding through our 2021 Student and Postdoctoral Research Awards program! These annual awards, each up to $2,500, honor early-career ornithologists doing research that advances our understanding of avian biology and bird conservation. The Research Awards Committee puts a great deal of …

Revealing the evolutionary enigmas of the song of a neotropical rainforest bird on the Brazilian coast

By Adriana Acero and Marcos Maldonado-Coelho Linked Paper: Ecological and evolutionary drivers of geographic variation in songs of a Neotropical suboscine bird: The Drab-breasted Bamboo Tyrant (Hemitriccus diops, Rhynchocyclidae), by Adriana Carolina Acero-Murcia, Fábio Raposo do Amaral, Fábio C. de Barros, Tiago da Silva Ribeiro, Cristina Y. Miyaki, Marcos Maldonado-Coelho, Ornithology. Who has ever wondered …

AOS statement of solidarity with Asian, Asian-American, and Pacific Islander communities

The following is a message from AOS President Michael Webster, President-Elect Colleen Handel, and the members of the AOS Diversity & Inclusion Committee, co-chaired by Sharon Gill and Viviana Ruiz Gutierrez. We write to express the American Ornithological Society’s (AOS’s) solidarity with the many Asian, and Asian-American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities and to condemn …

AOS welcomes new event coordinator

Hi, I’m Lauren Gates, the new event coordinator for AOS; I’m so excited to join this team and support the work of the many AOS member volunteers! I hope to bring extraordinary energy, enthusiasm, and passion to AOS in this next chapter of my career. I recently moved from Atlanta, Ga. to Chicago, Ill., and …

AOS Community Forum

We hope you’ll join us online on Wednesday, 24 March at 5:00 p.m. (EDT) for our next quarterly AOS Community Forum, which we look forward to hosting. For this webinar, we’ve invited the leaders of the Society’s various funding programs designed to support, recognize, and advance the careers of our student, postdoc, and early professional …

AOS Announces Executive Director Transition

Chicago, IL, February 26, 2021 – After seven years serving as the first executive director of the American Ornithological Society (AOS), the leading international society for professionals dedicated to advancing the science and conservation of birds, Melinda Pruett-Jones has announced her intention to retire at the end of June. The AOS was formed in 2016 …

Joint Society Statement on Ornithological Field Safety

AOS recently became aware of a public allegation of a sexual assault by a well-known birder that occurred during a bird-watching excursion in a metro-Atlanta park. The professional ornithological societies of the Americas have come together in solidarity with a statement affirming our commitment to maintaining the safety of everyone participating in ornithological field activities …

High-intensity Flight Feather Molt: A Cryptic but Critical Phase of the Annual Cycle of Migratory Warblers

By Ronald L. Mumme Linked paper: High-intensity flight feather molt and comparative molt ecology of warblers of eastern North America, by Ronald L. Mumme, Robert S. Mulvihill, David Norman, Ornithology. The lives of migratory songbirds inhabiting the north temperate zone are built around three dramatic and energetically demanding phases of their annual cycle: spring migration, …