Kern Audubon Society Zoom Holiday Meeting
Tuesday, December 1, 7 PM
Presentation
“Motus – an exciting new method to track the movements of birds, bats, and insects”
Kristie Stein, MS
BHS Holiday Choir & Online Auction
Biologist Kristie Stein explains MOTUS tracking and tri-colored blackbird migration, BHS Holiday Choir serenades us, and our annual auction comes to you online (Click to see separate instructions document)!
Talk Summary:
Migratory animals present a difficult challenge for researchers, given that they complete their annual cycle across areas of thousands of kilometers. In order to understand the habitat and space use requirements of bird species, we must be able to track individual birds over long periods of time with great accuracy.
In 2014, Bird Studies Canada created the Motus Wildlife Tracking System (motus-wts.org) now an international collaborative research network of automated radio-telemetry receiving stations with more than 400 receiver stations from the Canadian Arctic to South America, operated by more than 100 collaborators.
Despite significant gaps across the western portions of North and South America, it facilitates landscape-scale research and education on the ecology and conservation of migratory animals. I will explain the ins and outs of the automated telemetry system, introduce the Partners in Flight Western Working Group’s initiative to expand the network in the west, and provide information on how you can get involved with this effort. Additionally, I will present our findings using Motus to determine the seasonal movement patterns and habitat associations of the Kern River Valley Tricolored Blackbird population.
The Speaker:
Kristie Stein is a Wildlife Biologist with the Southern Sierra Research Station (SSRS) in Weldon, California. Kristie earned a B.S. in Natural Resource Ecology and Management from Louisiana State University in 2013 and a M.S. in Environment and Natural Resources from The Ohio State University in 2018. She became enamored with birds at a young age from following her father around the swamps of Louisiana, but it wasn’t until she took an Ornithology course at LSU that she realized her real passion was avian research.
Kristie has experience conducting fieldwork across the eastern United States as well as Peru and Puerto Rico including both game and non-game species. Her graduate research used multiple tracking technologies to fill gaps in the full annual life cycle of Black-crowned Night-Herons, a species of conservation concern across the Great Lakes region. More generally, her research interests include post-fledging ecology, seasonal interactions and carry-over effects, and movement ecology.
Currently, at SSRS, Kristie is assisting with many ongoing research projects as well as leading a movement study of Tricolored Blackbirds, a state endangered species, using automated telemetry towers that are part of the Motus wildlife tracking system.
Use Passcode 310495 to join Zoom meeting 941 4056 9245
or use this link: https://zoom.us/j/94140569245?pwd=SlFla0hZNWFtd1d3NTU0WGpUSDc4UT09
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How to Participate in the Kern Audubon Society Online Auction
You can preview items for the KAS Holiday Online Auction at any time before the auction starts (6 pm on December 1), and then bid as often and as much as you like during the auction, from 6 pm to 8:30 pm on the night of our December General Meeting, which starts at 7 pm on Tuesday, December1.
See our events page for more details!
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