(Note: This meeting and presentation took place online, via Zoom platform technology, due to social-distancing protocols prompted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.)
At 7:00 pm, President Ken Chaya called the meeting of the Society to order. He introduced himself and thanked the attendees for joining the meeting. As of that moment, he said, 163 people were watching the meeting live.
He welcomed the two new officers of the LSNY council, Secretary Deborra Mullins and Vice President Gabriel Willow, and announced that the full slate of officers recommended by the council at the 2021 annual meeting was unanimously passed with 181 votes.
President Chaya noted that this was our seventh speaker meeting to take place live and online, and that it was still unknown when the Society could return to presenting its programs in the Linder Theater at the American Museum of Natural History. Until then, we would continue to bring our programs online on a monthly basis.
Commencing with the business portion of the meeting, President Chaya announced the result of a recent online vote to approve a slate of new council members. It passed with 134 votes of approval and none of disapproval. President Chaya welcomed the following 13 individuals as new members:
- Dr. Kevin Burgio, Active, sponsored by Kathryn Heintz, Tod Winston, and Kaitlyn Parkins
- Prathima Christdas, Active, sponsored by Miriam Rakowski
- Erica Piik, Active, sponsored by Kathleen Matthews
- Elizabeth Keim, Active, sponsored by Kathleen Matthews
- Dr. Alison North, Active, sponsored by Miriam Rakowski
- Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, Supporting, sponsored by Ken Chaya
- Joseph Goddu, Supporting, sponsored by Miriam Rakowski
- Steven DeWitt , Active, sponsored by Ken Chaya
- Christina von Braun, sponsored by Will Papp
- Rick Weiman, sponsored by Ursula Mitra
- Jelisa Renee Oliveras, sponsored by Regina Alvarez
- Pamela Carley, sponsored by John Holland
- Eileen M. Schwinn, sponsored by Vicki Seabrook
He then announced the result of a vote to approve the minutes of the January meeting: it passed with 133 votes of approval, none of disapproval, and one abstention.
The following four individuals were unanimously approved as new or returning council members by the same online vote:
- Marie-Claire Cunningham
- Ursula Mitra
- Lydia Thomas
- Michelle Zorzi
President Chaya then invited non-members in attendance to join the Society, explaining that they could learn how to do so by visiting the LSNY website, www.linnaeannewyork.org. He also pointed out that he or any of the other LSNY officers listed on the website would be willing to sponsor anyone who would like to join, emphasizing that an organization is only as healthy as its growing and diverse membership. He declared that the LSNY welcomes all to become members regardless of race, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, background, or geographic location.
President Chaya then spoke of the Society’s need to incorporate, explaining that its current constitution leaves the Society vulnerable to liability issues and is not compatible with 21st-century banking requirements. The leadership of the council has been working with attorneys to bring the LSNY into the 21st century as a legal not-for-profit organization. Members are not likely to notice any differences in the Society’s general activities, and the council and president unanimously support this change. He said that a letter will be sent to members shortly, along with a summary of the proposed changes and a copy of the new bylaws. Approximately 30 days later, members will be asked to vote yes/no on incorporation and the new bylaws. The LSNY will need a three-fourths majority vote to make any changes to our constitution.
At 7:16 pm, President Chaya announced that this evening’s program would feature a private screening of the documentary Full Circle, followed by a talk with Executive Producer Anne Via McCullough, along with Cinematographer Michael Male, Great Gull Island Project Director Helen Hays, and a GGI team member, Joe DiCostanzo.
Full Circle provides an intimate view of the Great Gull Island Project. The largest Common Tern colony in the world and the largest Roseate Tern colony in the Western Hemisphere are both found on this 17-acre island in Long Island Sound. Under the direction of Helen Hays since 1969, the team at Great Gull Island monitors the nesting sites of Common and Roseate Terns. The film also shows the contribution of individual ornithologists and communities in Brazil, Argentina, and the Azores to the documentation of the terns’ migration routes.
Since 2005, Anne Via McCollough has been volunteering in the Department of Ornithology at the American Museum of Natural History, working in collections for Paul Sweet. During her years at the Museum, Anne learned about the Great Gull Island Project and volunteered—marking nests—on the island in 2013. Her association with Helen Hays showed her first-hand the value of long-term scientific fieldwork. In February of 2016, Anne founded Taking Flight Productions with Ethan Ferkiss. They began filming in April 2016 with cinematographer Phillip Townsend and were joined by cinematographer Michael Male in 2018.
In addition to interviews with Helen Hays and stunning footage of the work on the island, as well as of the team’s collaborative international work, the film includes interviews with a number of GGIP volunteers, scientists, and team members over its 50-year history and historical footage from the 1976 documentary, Ternwatch.
Speaking of the project’s genesis, Hays said, “When I first came to the American Museum of Natural History, I was cataloguing dead birds, but I was more interested in live birds.” So, when a woman in the education department called her one day and asked if she’d like to come to GGI, she was intrigued.
The island was used by the military during WWII, destroying the original tern colonies there. Following the war, the AMNH paid $1.00 to purchase the island and then reached out to the Linnaean Society to restore terns to the island. Members went there, removed military structures, and restored some of the habitat. Hays saw this as her opportunity to study live birds and assembled volunteers who were willing and able to spend at least a week at a time there. Volunteers were a mix of ages and included retirees and college students.
In 1968, when the project began, 1,500 pairs of Common and 1,500 pairs of Roseate Terns were nesting on the island. That year, there was a great deal of rain and, thus, many avian fatalities. Fortunately, that year proved to be an unusual one, and the 1969 breeding season was much better. The island now has 30,000+ birds and is one of the great seabird colonies of the world.
Although no two years are exactly alike, the birds typically first arrive from South America around April 26 or 27 and within a few days settle themselves on the island. The Roseate Terns prefer to nest in the rocks, while the Common Terns prefer open areas. To contain vegetation growth for Common Terns, the Meadow Voles which once inhabited the island were successfully reintroduced. For Roseate Terns, special nesting areas were built which mimicked the rocky habitat they prefer.
Hays and others described the courtship, mating, and nest selection of the terns. Volunteers had to wear special hats with distractions on top to deter the protective tern parents from causing them injury as they went about marking the nests. By June 10, usually the first chick hatches. As the chicks cannot control their own body temperature, the parents need to help keep them both warm and cool enough until they can self-regulate.
It is at this point that the volunteers begin their banding. Hays and others in the film spoke of how once a bird has a band, you have access to every record ever made about that bird—its parentage, birth date, birth location, etc. Future encounters can also be tracked and added to its record. Banding changes a bird from just being a bird to being an individual. Populations can be studied over time. Once the chicks are tagged, the next step is to trap and identify the parents.
Chicks begin to flap their wings from the time they’re a week old, and at 28 days, their wings are usually long enough to fly. They begin to fish on their own at about six weeks, but adults will feed them for at least nine weeks. During this time, the volunteers and scientists do a lot of observing on GGI, using telescopes to note the band number of an individual bird and making notes on its behavior.
Once the young are strong enough to fly greater distances, the entire colony prepares to depart. At the end of the summer, the team watches the birds leave, and the island gradually gets quieter and quieter.
In the early 1970s, volunteers began finding abnormal chicks with numerous birth defects. Hays reached out to a contact at Cornell University and sent him the dead birds for analysis. He found PCPs in both the dead birds and the fish they had been eating. This was the first warning that the PCBs in the environment were affecting humans too; it prompted corrective measures. Since that time, further defects have not been seen.
Today, because of climate change, water temperatures have been quite different from one year to the next. It is unclear what impact this will have on terns and their ability to feed their young in the future.
The film also looked at the GGIP’s efforts to learn where in South America the birds were spending their winters. One year in the 1990s, starting in the southernmost part of Argentina, Hays and her colleagues worked their way up the coast searching for the terns’ wintering grounds. Arriving at Punta Rasa, Argentina, they were amazed to find roughly 30,000 Common Terns, a larger population than had been seen before anywhere. After several days there, they were introduced to Esteban Bremer, who worked for the Argentine Wildlife Federation and had caught a bird banded on GGI 17 years earlier. (Argentinians now come regularly to GGI and work with Americans on both the winter and summer grounds of the terns.)
Finding no Roseate Terns in Argentina, Hays and her team moved further up the coast, and in 1995, decided to search offshore Brazil, where they finally found the proverbial “needle in the haystack,” a flock of a few thousand Roseate Terns.
The project’s work continued to expand internationally. Finding that an individual named Pedro Lima in Mangue Seco, Brazil, was reporting his discovery of many of the GGI birds, Hays contacted him and went to visit. While there, she found that some of the terns in Brazil had been banded in the Azores, so she sent a team there in 1997 to band both Common and Roseate Terns. Meanwhile, the GGI team was going to Brazil and putting radio transmitters on terns to find out where they were going for food. Around this time, the team in the Azores caught a bird with one of the transmitters, learning that some of the terns spent the winter in Brazil and then nested in the Azores. This discovery indicated that at least some genetic diversity was likely being maintained.
Another example of the value of international collaboration appeared when it was noticed in Brazil that some fishermen were wearing bracelets with bird bands that had clearly been obtained by destroying terns. Hays found environmentalists from a local organization, Aquasis, who helped GGI engage with schools and fisherman to educate the villagers about protecting the terns. As a goodwill gesture, GGI created a toy boat regatta as part of the education process and then added beach cleanups and, ultimately, a “tern festival.”
The GGIP holds that the terns don’t belong to one country or hemisphere—rather, they are a link and help us forge relationships. In the fall of 2016, all the groups from various countries (Azores, Brazil, Argentina, U.S.) that had been working to protect these terns finally got to meet for the first time in Barcelona.
Over the decades, many of the GGIP students have become scientists, doctors, and, importantly, adults who understand the importance of science.
Thinking of who will carry on her work in the future, Hays said, “There is only one thing I would ask of that person: protect the terns and see that they can nest successfully here.”
At 8:32 pm, the film ended. Vice President Gabriel Willow introduced himself and said that it was an honor for the LSNY to host this private screening of the film. He announced that Anne Via McCollough, Michael Male, Helen Hays, and Joe DiCostanzo—who were all part of the project and appeared in the film—were on the Zoom call and able to answer questions. He then facilitated the Q&A portion of the program.
9:01 pm—Vice President Willow passed the floor back to President Chaya, who also thanked the speakers and complimented them on their incredible work on the GGI Project. He stated that over 200 people had joined the program and concluded by saying that viewers can support the work of GGI by sponsoring participants in the LSNY’s birdathon for the Great Gull Island Project on May 8 and 9. He will be sending all members information on how to participate in the birdathon and support the project.
Finally, he said that he hopes all viewers will join him again next month, when the program will feature a talk by Dr. Roland Kays, “Eastern Coyotes: Part Wolf, Part Dog; Extremely Adaptable and Close.”
9:06 pm—The meeting was adjourned.
Respectfully submitted by Amy Simmons, Recording Secretary