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Barred Owls
October 21, 2022 @ 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm
Barred Owls are non-migratory, primarily nocturnal, forest-dwelling birds of prey with a strong predilection for old-growth forests, rarely nesting far from some source of water—streams, ponds, or swamps. In eastern North America, their range extends through moist forests from Florida north to the Gaspe Peninsula Beginning late in the 19th century and through the early 20th, the species extended its range west. They are now established in parts of Oregon, Washington, most of British Columbia, and southern Alaska and the Northwest Territories, where they pose in some areas an existential threat to the endangered Northern Spotted Owl. Especially in the southeastern U.S., as far north as Washington, DC, and Cincinnati, OH and south to Florida, Barred Owls are firmly established in often densely human-population suburban neighborhoods that are old enough to have a canopy of mature hardwoods. Rob Bierregaard and his graduate students studied the thriving population of Barred Owls that have invaded the older suburban neighborhoods of Charlotte, NC. In this presentation, Rob will describe what he and his students learned tracking radio-tagged owls and reviewing hundreds of hours of video recordings from cameras installed in nest boxes. Their data provide a fascinating and detailed picture of the lives of these suburban, nocturnal predators.
About Rob Bierregaard
Rob is a research associate of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University in Philadelphia. From 1979 to 1988, working for the World Wildlife Fund and the Smithsonian Institution, he directed—in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon—the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project, which has been described as the largest and most ambitious ecological experiment ever undertaken.
Upon his repatriation in the late 80s, he taught in the Biology Department of UNC-Charlotte for 18 years and returned his studies to his true passion—birds of prey. His research over the past three decades has focused on Barred Owls in Charlotte and Ospreys in northeastern North America. From 2000 to 2017, Rob and his colleagues deployed satellite transmitters on 108 Ospreys, from South Carolina to Newfoundland.
In 2018 he published his first children’s book, Belle’s Journey, a narrative non-fiction account of a young Osprey’s first migration to southern Brazil and back again.
NOTE:
This is in person AND virtual. Please register, even if you will attend virtually. You will be provided with a Zoom link in the confirmation emails.
