Ornithology

Museum collections are long-term data sets that document changes in bird distributions and in their physical traits and gene pools over the last 150+ years.  I am studying changes in body size of Red-bellied Woodpeckers as they have expanded their range northward in the past several decades.  For the past few summers I have also been conducting bird surveys in the Adirondack Mountains to compare with historic surveys conducted 40+ years ago to examine altitudinal shifts in bird distributions.