Meetings and Speakers

March Meeting

Grassland birds on Cornell lands: survey results and opportunities for conservation

Adriaan Dokter, PhD
Research Associate, Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Monday, March 9, 2026, 7:30pm
Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Since spring 2023 the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has worked with undergraduate students and the Cayuga Bird Club to assess the abundances of grassland birds on Cornell lands. Grassland birds are a species group of high conservation concern because of steep declines throughout the country. I will discuss the results of recent point counts and identify the number and species composition of grassland birds currently breeding on Cornell lands. Our goal is to seek collaborations within the university to manage lands for grassland birds. I will discuss what I have learned about the complex dimensions of land use, including for agriculture, hay production, and research, and discuss opportunities to improve land management for grassland birds. Finally, I will have an open discussion on how the Cayuga Bird Club and the Lab of Ornithology could work together to improve the breeding success of grassland birds on Cornell land in Tompkins and surrounding counties.

About the speaker: Adriaan Dokter studies the seasonal migrations of birds, from the continental-scale movements of species to the fine-scale behavior of individuals flying through the atmosphere. He uses weather radar networks, citizen science data and tracking data to address questions in migration ecology, including when and where birds migrate, when and where birds die within the annual cycle, and how shifting patterns in mortality and recruitment of young birds cause bird abundances to change. At the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Adriaan leads the BirdCast project, an online platform for observing and forecasting bird migration in real-time. He also develops software tools for biologists using weather radar as a tool in their research and has been involved in undergraduate research around grassland birds at Cornell since 2023, focusing on the breeding success of Bobolink on Cornell lands.

After receiving his Ph.D. at the Institute of Atomic and Molecular Physics in Amsterdam, Adriaan studied animal movement during postdoctoral appointments at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, the University of Amsterdam, and the Netherlands Meteorological Institute.