*** THE LINNAEAN SOCIETY OF NEW YORK - MEETING PROGRAM - AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, NEW YORK CITY ***
Next Tuesday evening (Jan 14 2014) the Society will host another evening of back-to-back presentations by two accomplished ornithologists. The unifying theme is the visual beauty of birds as celebrated through a rich history of ornithological illustration (Paul Sweet) and by our growing understanding of why and how bird colors have evolved (Bob Montgomerie). Please join us for what should be a really fascinating evening. *6:00 pm — Extraordinary Birds, **Paul Sweet* Paul Sweet is the Collection Manager in the Ornithology Department of the American Museum of Natural History (in charge of the department's many different collections) and the author of the recent book *Extraordinary Birds*, the second in the museum’s *Natural Histories *series, which traces the entwined histories of art and science through illustrated works from the museum’s Rare Book Collection. He will discuss his book, which features bird illustrations from 40 rare volumes with accompanying essays (the boxed set also contains these illustrations as separate frameable prints). He writes, “I examine the history of ornithological illustration from the Renaissance to the 20th century, tracing the development of printing techniques, world exploration and scientific thought, and tell the stories of important figures from the history of ornithology.” *7:30 pm — Birds are more colorful than they look, Bob Montgomerie* Bob Montgomerie received his PhD at McGill University, followed by a 10-year research fellowship at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, where he is now Professor and Research Chair in Evolutionary Biology. In 2010 he received the American Ornithologists’ Union's Elliott Coues Award, which “recognizes extraordinary contributions to ornithological research.” The citation for his award reads, in part: “Bob Montgomerie is a Canadian behavioral ecologist, best known for his wide-ranging studies of sexual selection and parental care in birds. His research program is noteworthy both for the broad diversity of species and topics in which he and his students have made important contributions and for his creative insights and questions.... He is widely recognized as a leader in the study of plumage color, and here, too, he has studied a wide variety of species. The overarching theme is to understand plumage evolution in a broad ecological and life-history context.... He is a Fellow of the AOU and has received numerous awards for both research and graduate teaching.” Prof. Montgomerie writes of his talk, “Recent technological advances have allowed us to measure accurately the colors that birds display, and to estimate what they see when they look at each other. The surprise is that they are much more colorful than they look to us, and that they can detect subtle differences in coloration that are invisible to us. Over the past 20 year my research group has studied the colors and displays of fairywrens and bowerbirds in Australia, ptarmigan and buntings in the high arctic, robins, swallows and goldfinches in Ontario, and feral peafowl in LA, NY and Toronto. I will use these studies to address what I think are some fascinating questions about the evolution of bird colors. Why are they so colorful? What do they look like to each other? Why are some colors so common and others so rare? How does the color of their plumage influence mating and social interactions? Why are females of some species so brightly colored? How do they use ambient light to enhance their colorful displays? Why do so many species lay colorful eggs?” *WHERE & WHEN* Both programs are open to the public FREE OF CHARGE and will be held in the Linder Theater of the AMNH. Enter the museum from the 77th Street entrance, where the route to the auditorium will be sign posted. The first program will last approximately one hour with time before the second program to talk to the speakers, and mingle with TLS officers and council members, who can provide information on becoming a part of this thriving natural history society. *MORE INFORMATION ON TLS PROGRAMS* Please check out (and bookmark) our website: http://linnaeannewyork.org/programs.html or visit us on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/*Linnaean*-*Society* -of-New-York/335385365977?ref=ts<http://www.facebook.com/pages/Linnaean-Society-of-New-York/335385365977?ref=ts> Look forward to seeing you on Tuesday (no reservations necessary). Angus Wilson Vice President, The Linnaean Society of New York -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
