Happy New Year! And thank you for your interest and support. We started BNI in the throes of the pandemic as an additional offering to John Ellis’ News Items (which is always interesting and often important). And thanks to you, BNI seems to have taken on a life of its own. We hope you continue to find it entertaining and – dare we hope - even interesting!
To wave goodbye to 2022 and ring in the new year, we thought we’d offer five wonderful videos for your enjoyment over this long holiday weekend, and throw in some of the favorite bird pics from this past year. A common thread throughout these videos is the extraordinary cinematography of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology’s Center for Conservation Media. Organizations throughout the world come to the Center for dramatic video documentation that helps them tell a story of urgent conservation need. The resulting work is always stunningly beautiful and the story always well told.
1. We’ll start with Wendy Paulson’s wonderful video, “Birds and Hope”, which we’ve run before but the message is timeless and the Lab’s film footage is beautiful:
By Paulson Institute and Cornell Lab, “Wendy Paulson Birds and Hope”.
2. The second video is the Lab’s “Birds of the Yellow Sea” – a short video put together to help stakeholders – like the Paulson Institute - create awareness in China of the critical importance of the Yellow Sea’s intertidal mudflats to migratory shorebirds.
By Cornell Lab of Ornithology, “Birds of the Yellow Sea”.
3. The third video, in keeping with the importance of critical habitat on key migratory routes, is a short film the Lab put together entitled “A Call For Cooperation – Saving the Places Migratory Birds Call Home”:
By Cornell Lab of Ornithology, “A Call For Cooperation – Saving the Places Migratory Birds Call Home”.
4. The fourth video details arguably the most astonishing avian discovery in the United States in decades, a heretofore unknown stopover spot on South Carolina’s Deveaux Bank for 20,000 migrating Whimbrels. Beautiful footage of these remarkable migrants. Discovery at Deveaux: Safe Refuge for 20,000 Whimbrel – Conservation Media:
By Cornell Lab of Ornithology, “Deveaux Bank South Carolina Whimbrel Announcement”.
5. And finally, if you have never seen a picture or video of a Bird-of-Paradise, let alone several, you will be blown away by this stunning, short overview of the Lab’s Birds-of-Paradise Project:
By Cornell Lab of Ornithology, “Birds-of-Paradise Project”.
Finally, if you are looking for one bird-related book to read in 2023, we would (again) recommend “A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds”, by Scott Weidensaul.
Happy New Year!