Big Birder Ted Floyd Returns to Town for Talk & Walk

27 Jun Big Birder Ted Floyd Returns to Town for Talk & Walk

The mission of The Nature Conservancy is to protect the lands and waters on which all life depends. Since 1965, the nonprofit has been working in Colorado to help to protect 1 million acres and improve 1,000 river miles across the state.

Protection starts with understanding what’s out there. To that end, The Nature Conservancy is bringing Big Bird–er Ted Floyd back to Telluride to give another talk and guide another walk, part of a weekend that also includes a walk around Keystone Gorge, Saturday, July 1, 8 p.m. At 1 p.m., kids and families are invited to meet at the Beaver Pond. The birding event, co-hosted by Between the Covers, begins at 3 p.m. at Between the Covers Bookstore.

On Sunday, July 2, starting at 7 a.m., Floyd guides a very special birding event: see the Black Swifts at Bridal Veil Falls.

Let’s play a game of free association.

If I say “birds,” what do you say?

Alfred Hitchcock?

Audobon Society?

Geeks with binoculars and sore necks?

Ted Floyd would be a great answer too.

Once again, The Nature Conservancy hosts Ted Floyd, editor of Birding, the flagship publication of the American Birding Association and author of the “American Birding Association Field Guide to Birds of Colorado” and “The Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America.”

Make it a point to show up at Between the Covers on Saturday, July 1. For about a half-hour, enjoy coffee or tea and a talk with Floyd, then head out for guided birding.

“We’ll be there at the best time of year to enjoy the spectacular birds, butterflies, wildflowers, and scenery of the southern Rocky Mountains eco-region. Our pace will be relaxed and leisurely. And we’ll stop to smell the flowers– literally! We’ll also enjoy tanagers, warblers, grosbeaks, buntings, and more, all in their finest breeding plumage. And we expect to see many colorful butterflies, including fritillaries, checkerspots, and swallowtails,” explains Floyd.

Ted Floyd

About the Book:

Colorado is home to 496 types of birds, making it one of the finest birding destinations in the world. The birds in “American Birding Association Field Guide to Birds of Colorado” are organized by type and appear in color photographs accompanied by introductions, identification tips, and habitat and birdsong descriptions. The book also includes a state bird checklist and a directory of birding destinations, making this field guide the perfect companion for anyone interested in learning about the state’s birds and where to see them.

About Ted Floyd:

Ted Floyd has published widely on birds and ecological topics. He has written more than 125 articles, with contributions to scholarly journals such as Ecology, Oecologia, Animal Behaviour, Journal of Animal Ecology, and Trends in Ecology and Evolution and to popular magazines such as Natural History, Birdwatcher’s Digest, and Birding. He has contributed chapters to textbooks and guidebooks published by Oxford University Press, Houghton Mifflin, and National Geographic. Floyd is senior author of the Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Nevada (University of Nevada Press, 2007) and author of the Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America (HarperCollins, 2008).

Floyd received a B.A. in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University in 1990 and a Ph.D. in Ecology from Penn State University in 1995. He is currently an instructor with the American Birding Association’s Institute for Field Ornithology program, and he has taught college-level courses in ecology, evolution, entomology, statistics, conservation biology, and other topics. Floyd is a frequent speaker at birding festivals and ornithological meetings, and he has led birding trips and workshops throughout North America. He has lived and birded in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado. In the course of his scientific research and outreach activities, he has visited and birded in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, as well as South America, Europe, and Asia.

Floyd has broad interests in birding and ornithology, especially as they relate to conservation and management. In recent years, he participated in the creation of Bird Conservation Plans for Partners in Flight and in the production of Eco-Regional Plans for The Nature Conservancy.

Currently, Ted Floyd is contributing to an effort to describe the nocturnal flight calls of migrating birds in western North America, and his findings are helping to clarify basic patterns of occurrence of birds on active migration in the West. His work has also highlighted the value of nocturnal flight calls as an identification aid for bird species that are otherwise easy to overlook in the field.