After learning about Prof. Clark’s background and academic work, we had a chance to dive into details around winter Crow roost and strategies for accurate counting of the Crows. Prof Clark shared her methodologies for counting in blocks, preferred times for making counts, the relevance around orders of magnitude, using photography, having counting team members in place, vantage points, and recording tools for documenting purposes.
Anne Clark: a behavioral ecologist broadly interested in the evolution and ecology of animal social behavior. In addition to other research, she has spent time over the last 20 years, researching the social ecology of American crows in suburban Ithaca, NY. Ongoing studies with her wonderful grad and undergrad students include genetics, communication, learning and personality. The advent of West Nile Virus in our long-term study population of crows has added a focus on social and demographic effects of injury and disease for me, my collaborator, Dr. KJ McGowan (Cornell Lab of Ornithology), and former students Dr. D. Robinson (Mount St. Mary's College) and Dr. A. Townsend (Hamilton College). Her current students have extended crow research to new species: Fish Crows, Mariana Crows and Large-billed Jungle Crows. At Binghamton University, I teach classes in “Animal Behavior”, “Primate Behavioral Ecology” and “Behavior and Disease” plus diverse graduate seminars.
