Angus Wilson is Associate Professor and Assistant Dean at the New York University School of Medicine, where he heads a laboratory that studies the biology of herpes viruses and their role in causing human disease. He is a Council Member of the Linnaean Society, a member of the New York State Ornithological Society’s Board of Directors, and, since 1999, the chairman of the New York State Avian Records Committee. The author of many articles on bird distribution, vagrancy, and identification, Wilson is recognized by the pelagic birding community as one of its leading experts. When two of the West Coast’s most outstanding pelagic birders, Alvaro Jaramillo and Peter Pyle, separately came to speak to the Linnaean Society in 2011, each of them had two wishes: to have access to the bird skins collection at AMNH and to go birding with Angus Wilson. He writes, “My presentation will focus on the seabirds that range across the food-rich waters of the Southern Ocean, a vast and immensely rich marine wilderness surrounding the continent of Antarctica. Using my own photographs, many taken at sea, I will review the diversity of species, including penguins, albatrosses, petrels, and skuas, and consider their place in the broader ecology of the oceans and the great journeys that many species undertake. During the hour we will visit the remote and startlingly beautiful subarctic islands of Macquarie, Campbell, and South Georgia that provide essential nesting grounds for millions of these seabirds.”
