[SEMCO] Cape Cod Bird Club Press Release

[Diane Silverstein]

The Cape Cod Bird Club presents

Mark Faherty

"The Cape Cod Osprey Project: Voyeuristic Citizen Science"

Monday, March 12, 2012   7:30pm,  

Cape Cod Museum of Natural History, Route 6A, Brewster MA

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (3/7/12)

CONTACT: Diane Silverstein, 508-364-7050, birder526 at comcast.net
<mailto:birder526 at comcast.net> 

 

 

 

The Cape Cod Osprey Project: Voyeuristic Citizen Science - Mark Faherty,
Science Coordinator, Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary and President,
Cape Cod Bird Club 

The Cape Cod Osprey project started at Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary
with a small network of telephone informants reporting on the
productivity of their local osprey nests, mainly on the Outer Cape. The
project has since grown into a network of over 70 volunteers helping to
map and monitor nests from Wellfleet to Falmouth. Volunteers use Google
Earth to map nests, and then monitor them periodically to note the
timing of important events in the nesting cycle such as the initiation
of incubation, hatch date, and ultimately the number of chicks
successfully fledged from each nest. The project has shed light on this
previously mysterious population of ospreys and allowed comparisons with
better studied populations on the Westport River and on Martha's
Vineyard. We also satellite tracked a juvenile Eastham Osprey named
Goody Hallet on her southward migration from Cape Cod to South America,
with many wacky stops in between, and her travels will be detailed in
this talk. Perhaps most importantly, we've engaged an ever-growing corps
of citizen scientists in tracking a species whose fate is directly
linked with the health of our coastal ecosystems.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION: Mark Faherty has been the Science Coordinator
at Mass Audubon's Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary since August 2007 and
President of Cape Cod Bird Club since 2009. While his current projects
involve everything from oysters and horseshoe crabs to bats and
butterflies, he has studied primarily bird ecology for the last 16
years, working on research projects in Texas, Florida, California,
Arizona, Mexico, the Pacific Northwest, and the Cape Cod National
Seashore. He appreciates the osprey project because it allows him to
keep one wing in the ornithological world while also taking credit for
work done primarily by other, unpaid people. 

 

 

Diane Silverstein, Volunteer Coordinator

Mass Audubon

Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary

PO Box 236

291 State Highway Rte. 6

S. Wellfleet, MA 02663

508-349-2615, ext. 101

email: dsilverstein at massaudubon.org

website: www.massaudubon.org

facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MassAudubonWellfleetBay

 

Protecting the Nature of Massachusetts

 

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