NOTE: Our regularly scheduled program, Larry Arbanas on Montana and the West Coast, has been postponed. We have a new program which will be ZOOM ONLY. NO IN-PERSON MEETING. No pre-meeting dinner. Please enjoy the program from home.

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https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88471103580?pwd=QXcyZ2RXc0Y1Y2NJeis4NFA0ejM4QT09

Meeting ID: 884 7110 3580 Passcode: 708853

Jay will discuss some of the challenges and results of his study of this uncommon desert bird. This thrasher is a shy, poorly-known, and little-studied species found in the hottest and driest deserts of the American Southwest and northwestern Mexico. The bird rarely, if ever, drinks any water. Jay has spent years studying this enigmatic bird and gives the results of his study with some insight into its daily life. Some 350 thrashers were color-banded and followed around an 1800-acre tract in the San Joaquin Valley of California for several years. Extensive information was learned about the life history of this bird. His monograph, “The Biology of a Desert Apparition: LeConte’s Thrasher (Toxostoma lecontei)” was published in 2018.

Jay is a retired biologist from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and lives in Laurel, Maryland. He worked for a number of years at the Bird Banding Laboratory, located at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Refuge, and later in the endangered species program office in Washington, DC. He was born and raised in Ohio, went to Miami University, served 5 years as a Navy officer with the Pacific Fleet, and moved to Maryland in 1972 after graduate school at Long Beach State University. He has been watching and studying birds and nature since as long as he can remember.