Andrew Farnsworth is Research Associate in the Conservation Science Program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. He received his Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from Cornell, studying characteristics of flight calls. He conducts his fieldwork on flight calls and migration throughout the United States and the Caribbean and works with several conservation groups and industry partners to advance research on the potential risks to migratory wildlife from wind energy. He is a board member of New York City Audubon, has written and co-authored species accounts for the Handbook of Birds of the World, and leads tours in North and South America and the Caribbean for Victor Emanuel Nature Tours. He writes, “Until recently, rarely have we been able to the identify the species of birds migrating at night. Knowing the species composition of nocturnal migration is critically important for conservation efforts, especially given the explosion of human activities that are changing the night sky. My research focuses on using acoustic technology to track nocturnally migrating birds by their flight calls. I will be speaking about the ecology and evolution of these calls, the basics of acoustic migration monitoring, including how to identify these calls, and the practical relevance of acoustic monitoring for understanding migration biology and enhancing conservation planning. I will also be speaking about acoustic monitoring in relation to BirdCast, an exciting new collaboration among ornithologists, computer scientists, and meteorologists to predict movements of birds. At the conclusion of the talk, weather permitting, I will invite the audience to join me at Belvedere Castle, nearby in Central Park, to listen for flight calls of passing nocturnal migrants.”
