Sierra Club Sierra Talks
The San Diego County Bird Atlas: The Atlas puts each species into its context with respect to breeding biology, migration, habitat use, and conservation. It is unusual among bird atlases in covering winter distributions as well as breeding distributions. In his presentation, the author Philip Unitt will address not only the surprises the atlas revealed, but how it has been used subsequently in studies of rare species in need of conservation, how is has been used to understand birds’ response to fire and habitat fragmentation, and how it has served as the basis for modeling distributions in general. Phil is Curator of birds and mammals at the San Diego Natural History Museum. He has published nearly 50 articles and book chapters on the distribution, ecology, identification, and conservation of birds. Phil also is a co-author of Birds of the Salton Sea. Since 1986 he has served as editor of Western Birds, the regional journal of ornithology for western North America, and co-authored article on the effects of California’s massive wildfires on birds.