On Saturday, February 13th at 7:00 PM, the Institute welcomes ornithologist and editor Kevin McGowan.  Affiliated with both the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Department of Natural Resources at Cornell University, Kevin will present a free public program called "The Uncommon Crow: A Hidden Life".  There will be an informal reception preceding the program, at 6:00 PM, giving visitors a chance to meet Kevin in person.  Kevin will be discussing his research on crows, and will also touch on his involvement with The Second Atlas of Breeding Birds in New York State, published in December 2008 by Cornell University Press.  The exhibit created from this book, entitled "Mapping the Birds of New York", is currently on view at the Institute, on loan from the New York State Museum in Albany.

Kevin was born in Springfield, Ohio, and has had an interest in birds and mammals his entire life.  He received a B.S. in Zoology from Ohio State University in 1977 and an M.S. in Zoology from Ohio State in 1980.  He completed his Ph.D. in 1987 at the University of South Florida.  In 1988 he went to work for Cornell University as a Curator/Research Associate in the Section of Ecology & Systematics (now the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology).  He was promoted to Senior Research Associate in 1994.  He was the principal caretaker of the bird and mammal collections, conducted his own research, and taught classes at Cornell in specimen preparation, field collecting methods, the relationship of birds, and Neotropical canopy biology and canopy access.  In July 2001, Kevin became a Research Associate at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in education, developing a website called All About Birds. In January 2005, he became the co-editor of the second New York State Breeding Bird Atlas project.  Kevin is a member of the Department of Natural Resources at Cornell University, but remains based at the Lab of Ornithology.

Kevin's main research concerns behavioral ecology of birds, especially social behavior.  He has been studying reproductive and social behavior of American Crows and Fish Crows in the Ithaca area since 1988.  Kevin is also interested in topics such as systematics, evolution, biogeography, natural history, and ecology.

Kevin is an elected member of the American Ornithologists' Union, former Secretary of the Ornithological Societies of North America (OSNA), and is the former editor of the Ornithological Newsletter, a bi-monthly publication of OSNA.  He is the President of the Cayuga Bird Club, the President and former webmaster for the New York State Ornithological Association, and a former member of the New York State Avian Records Committee (NYSARC).  Kevin has been a member of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology's team (The Sapsuckers), since 1990, that competes in the World Series of Birding in New Jersey each May.

For more information about Kevin McGowan and his research, please visit www.birds.cornell.edu/.