Oct-Dec 2008Quarterly News from the Center for
Conservation Biology
A member of William & Mary's faculty since 1956, Chancellor Professor Emeritus Mitchell Byrd served as chairman of the biology department for thirteen years during a time of rapid growth and directed its transition to a nationally recognized department with a broad-based curriculum. Many of Professor Byrd's over three dozen graduate students have been inspired by his commitment to scholarship and his deep concern for each individual. The Center for Conservation Biology, established by Mitchell Byrd and Bryan Watts in the fall of 1991, along with the College of William & Mary community has acknowledged this contribution by establishing the Mitchell A. Byrd Chair in Conservation Biology. This is truly one of the highest honors that can be bestowed by the academic community. 
Each of us in our own way and time seek out vantage points on the natural world. Places where unleashed from the past and unencumbered by the future, we are free to explore the innermost reaches of ourselves. For Walter Post Smith, this place was Kiptopeke, Virginia. Walter was one of four bird banders who founded the Kiptopeke Banding Station. Before his death in 2004 he compiled his annual reflections on each banding season into a book entitled Kiptopeke Chronicles. The book is a history of the development of the Kiptopeke Banding Station through the eyes of someone who was there from the beginning. More than a diary, the volume is a memoir of a person who enjoyed the energy of migrants passing through the woods on a fall day. Contact CCB to order a copy of Kiptopeke Chronicles.
A research team from The Center for Conservation Biology (CCB) recently returned from Central America, having successfully completed an aerial survey of the Pacific Coast of Panama to estimate and map waterbird populations during the peak of fall migration. Flying at an altitude of only 20-30 m in a Cessna with pilot Carlos Diaz the survey team flew 1,565 km of shoreline in 3 days between 21 and 24 October, 2008. More than 490,000 shorebirds, seabirds, herons and egrets were counted and mapped.
The whimbrel is a large shorebird that has a relatively well known breeding and winter distribution. The new world form breeds in two disjunct populations including the northwest from northern Alaska to the Yukon Territory and then near the southwestern shoreline of Hudson Bay. These birds do winter in low numbers in coastal areas of southern North America but primarily in Central and South America. Much less is known about migration routes and important migratory staging areas. From a broad conservation perspective, it is important to link breeding and winter populations and to delineate critical staging areas used by birds while in transit.
