Join us for this fun, interactive talk about a popular denizen of our shores. Black Skimmers are colonial seabirds that nest on open beaches throughout much of the US. This interactive talk will allow you to choose a banded Black Skimmer from the Tampa Bay area and make predictions about whether they stay in our region to breed and overwinter or go elsewhere. You will then hear what we know about your bird and others from the more than 15,000 band resights we have in our database. Black Skimmers are long-lived birds with complicated life histories that we are just beginning to understand.
Our speaker, Beth Forys is a professor of Environmental Science and Biology at Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, FL. She has been studying Black Skimmers (and other beach nesting birds) since 2000 and is still amazed by how little she knows! She teaches classes in Conservation Biology, GIS, and Field Ornithology.
Doors open at 6:30pm; program begins at 7pm.
Photo credit: Miri Hardy
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