Bryan's Posts About Vermont Center for Ecostudies

A Blackpoll Warbler’s Daring Trans-Atlantic Flight

Two wings and a prayer carry a Blackpoll Warbler on a remarkable journey to South America each autumn. Well, actually, two wings and the audacity to pull off one of the most amazing feats of migration on the planet: a non-stop, trans-Atlantic flight lasting up to three days.

After only speculating about this amazing journey for decades, my colleagues at the Vermont Center for Ecostudies today announced the proof. Blackpoll Warblers fitted with miniature tracking devices took off from points in either Nova Scotia or the northeastern U.S. and flew south over the Atlantic, with no safe place to land, until reaching Caribbean islands roughly 1,600 miles away.

A Bobolink’s Carbon Fingerprint

What happens in South America doesn’t stay in South America. Bobolinks now migrating north will unwittingly bring back clues about what they were up to last winter. For the ornithologists working to protect these songbirds, it amounts to “better living through nuclear chemistry” — and better conservation as well.

Your New Way to Wildlife

Here’s one more reason to go online before going outside. My pals at the Vermont Center for Ecostudies (VCE) today launched a new web site that features breaking news about birds, insects, amphibians and other wildlife here in Vermont and…

Upland Sandpipers Doing It

Feel good about these Upland Sandpipers not only because this photo offers us a cheap thrill. Feel good any time this grassland species reproduces. These are birds in trouble.

The Troubling Buzz on Bees

From my colleagues at the Vermont Center for Ecostudies: More than one-quarter of Vermont’s bumble bee species, which are vital crop pollinators, have either vanished or are in serious decline, according to a new investigation from the Vermont Center for…

Digital Photography Workshop – May 3

Friday Evening / May 3 / 6-8 pm Norwich, Vermont / $25 Give me two hours and I’ll give you your digital camera revealed. You’ll finally understand the dials, buttons and menus on your point-and-shoot or SLR camera. No longer will…

The Buzz on Bumblebees

WOODSTOCK, VT – In the delicate and passionate matters of “the birds and the bees,” Vermont may have no greater authority than Kent McFarland. Courtship and reproduction occupy a good portion of McFarland’s workday. No breeding behavior is too racy,…