2008 Cooper Ornithological Society/ American Ornithologist's Union/Society of Canadian Ornithologist's meeting

I returned to Boise 1.5 hours ago from the 2008 joint conference of three ornithological societies (Cooper Ornithological Society, American Ornithologist's Union, and the Society of Canadian Ornithologists) that took place in Portland, OR. It was an exciting meeting with over 900 attendees .....

Many of the banquet attendees for the 2008 conference ... lots of bird-nerds!

There were many great presentations but one of the main highlights for me was that as I stood up to give my presentation (comparing stopover ecology and capture heights of birds between Lucky Peak & Camas NWR), I could see 6 former IBO field assistants in the crowd (& 2 others were also at the conference)! All cool people & it was rewarding to hear about their research, etc. I was able to catch 5 of them on film (unfortunately, I didn't come up with the photo idea until the final afternoon and several folks couldn't be found among the hordes of ornithologists):

Catalina Londoño and Gabriel Colorado (both from Colombia). Gabriel worked at Lucky Peak in 1999 and then both Cata and Gabriel were at Lucky Peak for a couple weeks in 2003. Gabriel is now studying Cerulean Warblers for his PhD at Ohio State University and Cata is about to begin a Fulbright scholarship supported PhD in Environmental Economics at Illinois (Champaign-Urbana).

Zoltan Nemeth (left, from Hungary) alongside some colleagues (Jen Owen, Emily Cohen, and Kristina Paxton) affiliated with the Migratory Bird Research Group at U of Southern Mississippi. Zoltan worked with us in the summer & fall of 2000 (and we hadn't seen each other since!). He's married & about to complete his PhD with Frank Moore studying social behavior of migrating birds. (Also, I worked for Jen 10 years ago on a spring migration study in Louisiana!!)

Khara Strum (left, sitting with Susan Skagen of USGS in Colorado) is from Ohio and just finished her Masters at Kansas State where she studied pesticide exposure for migrating and wintering shorebirds. Khara worked at IBO in 2003 & 2004.

Michelle Labbe and Scott Kimball. Michelle worked with me at Camas NWR in 2005 and is about to finish her Masters at UMass where she studies the post-breeding ecology of migratory birds. Scott is a former BSU raptor biology student who's about to finish his PhD at Ohio State.

Needless to say, it was a lot of fun to see all these folks (along with Dan Battaglia, Dale Gentry, and Jeremy Russell -not shown) and catch up!

Cheers,

Jay