Collection search - Stutchbury, Bridget. Silence of the songbirds

Record information – Brief
1
Stutchbury, Bridget. Silence of the songbirds

Hierarchical level:

File

Date:

May 2010

Reference:

R16853-96-2-E, Volume number: 2, File number: 14

File no. (creator):

14

Type of material:

Moving images, Textual material

Found in:

Archives / Collections and Fonds

Item ID number:

5858786

Context of this record:

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The Green Interview fonds

Interviews

Stutchbury, Bridget. Silence of the songbirds
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Record information – Details

Date(s):

May 2010

Place of creation:

Canada

Extent:

2 video files (.mov, .mp4).
1 closed caption file (.vtt).
1 textual document (.pdf).
1 folder of textual records.

Language of material:

English

Scope and content:

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File consists of an interview with Bridget Stutchbury titled "Silence of the songbirds." The interview was conducted by Silver Donald Cameron as part of The Green Interview. File includes video of the interview, printed transcript, and closed captioning file.

From the interview: "Well, that term ["storms of angels"] comes from radar operators who noticed, in the 1940s, these big clouds on their radar. And they didn't know what was making those images on their radar, so they called them angels. And it was only later that they discovered that these are actually flocks of migrating birds. And radar bounces off water droplets, and bird bodies, like our bodies, are made mostly of water, so the radar will bounce off birds as well. And we can see the huge scale of bird migration by using ordinary weather radar.

"Most of the birds that I study fly at night, so it's dark out, and they are too high [...] they would be 500 feet up in the sky, too high to see a small warbler. But on weather radar, you can see these massive clouds of birds that alight after sunset, and take to the skies on their migration. And in one radar image, the whole screen could be covered in bright red, knowing that the red radar is usually nasty storms that we try to avoid. The whole screen is lit up in bright red, because there are just so many birds in the sky. It's as though there's a giant storm of birds flying over. But meanwhile, most people in their homes are unaware of this spectacle that's happening overhead."

Finding aid no.:

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MSS2736

Additional information:

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General note:

From The Green Interview website: "Topic: Birds."

From The Green Interview website: Dr. Bridget Stutchbury, an expert on the behaviour of migratory songbirds and the threats they face. She teaches at York University, and is the author of Silence of the Songbirds and The Bird Detective.

Bridget Stutchbury was born in Montreal and raised in Toronto. She completed her M.Sc. at Queen's University and her Ph.D. at Yale, and was a postdoctoral fellow and research associate at the Smithsonian Institution. She is a professor and Canada Research Chair in Ecology and Conservation Biology at York University, Toronto, and she is affiliated with more than a dozen organizations that seek to preserve bird habitats.

Why do birds have such glorious songs and such vibrant plumage? How do they choose their mates and care for their young? Do they have multiple sexual partners - and if so, how do they accomplish that, and how do their mates react?

Related material:

For audio-visual recordings of this interview, see IDCISN 607796.

Source:

Private
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Conditions of access:

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Moving images (video): electronic

[Consultation90 Open]

Textual records: electronic

[Consultation90 Open]

Textual records

[Consultation90 Open]

Volume [R16853]

[Consultation 90 Open]

2 File number 35

[Consultation 90 Open]

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Date modified:: 2024-07-04