Two centuries ago, a handful of European-American naturalists trekked around North America, competing to find birds that were still unknown to science. What was that experience like for them? When Kenn Kaufman looked into that period in history as research for his newest book, The Birds That Audubon Missed, he found surprising connections to our own time. Despite all the changes in the world, the adventures of those pioneers have many parallels in the experience of birding today. In this program, Kenn will celebrate discovery and rediscovery, the lure of the unknown, and the endless power of birds to delight and amaze us.

Now a legend among naturalists, Kenn Kaufman burst onto the birding scene as a teenager in the 1970s, hitch-hiking all over North America in pursuit of birds—an adventure later chronicled in his cult-classic book Kingbird Highway. After several years as a leader of birding tours worldwide, he transitioned to a career as a writer, editor, and illustrator. Most of his energy currently goes into book projects and painting bird portraits. Kenn has published 14 books and is a field editor for the National Audubon Society, a Fellow of the American Ornithological Society, and the only person to have received the American Birding Association’s lifetime achievement award twice.

Every fall, the entire North American population of Broad-winged Hawks fill the sky in what is often called “a river of raptors” as they journey thousands of miles to their wintering grounds in South America. In 2012 and 2013, however, monitoring data suggested a population decline of 10 to 40% in some Eastern states. The next year, to better understand the threats to this forest-nesting raptor, biologists at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania began tagging adult and juvenile birds with transmitters to track them year-round. Dr. Laurie Goodrich, Director of Conservation Science at the sanctuary, will join us to discuss what’s been discovered about the bird’s migration patterns, stopover habits, nesting behavior, and other data that can help set conservation priorities for this species.