Last week Sievert Rohwer posted a message with an update on the Ornithology
program at the Burke Museum and inviting people to inquire about making a
contribution to the Burke endowment. It has come to my attention that the
email address for the person you should contact was incorrect in Sieverts
message. If you are interested in receiving information about contributing
to the Burke Ornithology Endowment please contact Sharon Birks
(sbirks at u.washington.edu).

I hope you can help support our efforts to train and educate students and
better understand the birds of our world.

Best wishes,
Rob
--
Robert C. Faucett
Collections Manager
Ornithology
Burke Museum
Box 353010
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195-3010
Office: 206-543-1668
Home: 206-527-3545
Fax: 206-685-3039
rfaucett at u.washington.edu
www.washington.edu/burkemuseum

> From: University of Washington ListProcessor <listproc at u.washington.edu>
> Reply-To: listproc at u.washington.edu
> Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2003 07:56:06 PST
> To: rfaucett at u.washington.edu
> Subject: GET tweeters tweeters.log200301c (1/1)
>
> Dear Tweeters Subscriber:
>
> Several years ago the Burke became the official UW host for Tweeters. We
> entered into this relationship hoping the collaboration would help build
> bridges between the Burke's strengths in collections-based education and
> research, and an interested, supportive, public constituency. Because the
> press of other programs has kept the Ornithology staff of the Burke so busy
> this is our first posting to this list.
>
> Over the past 30 years Burke collections in Ornithology have become a
> tremendously important resource for teaching and international research,
> bring distinction to our region and to the University of Washington. One o=
> f
> our important annual activities is a Fall mail appeal for contributions to
> the general endowment supporting Ornithology at the Burke. Each year we us=
> e
> this appeal to provide an annual synopsis of highlights of divisional
> activities. This year Hal Opperman has very kindly suggested that we shoul=
> d
> post a notice of this effort on Tweeters. We certainly do not wish to
> burden anyone who is uninterested with a request for support, but we do wis=
> h
> to let people know of this opportunity to help build permanent support for
> Ornithology at the Burke. Thus we hope Tweeters subscribers who think they
> might be interested will send us their name and address so that we can mail
> them our Fall appeal.
>
> The past year has been another banner year for Burke Ornithology, with a
> record number of expeditions and continued vital participation by students
> in divisional activities. We were able to continue our strong commitment t=
> o
> research and expeditions in Russia after the fabulous news that Barbara Edd=
> y
> and Hugh Ferguson would step in to assure three more years of support for
> this program, which Garrett Eddy founded and supported annually until his
> death last year. We organized two expeditions to Russia last summer: Rob
> Faucett and two UW undergraduates worked in Irkutsk, while Sharon Birks and
> Ken Davis worked with Moscow State University Museum zoologists in
> Primor=B9ye. These expeditions contributed extensive material to our Genetic
> Resources Collection, which now holds the world=B9s only comprehensive
> collection of avian tissues from the former Soviet Union. This collection
> has provided the specimens for two PhD dissertations and for an ongoing
> series of papers exploring genetic variation in Eurasian and Holarctic
> birds. The species studied so far are showing some surprising evolutionary
> histories and affinities. For example, we have a paper in press at the Auk
> showing that the =B3Yellow Wagtails=B2 of Eurasia represent a complex of at
> least three distinct species, and further, that two of these previously
> unrecognized species are more closely related to other unrecognized species
> of the Citrine Wagtail than they are to other =B3Yellow Wagtails.=B2
> Similarly=
> ,
> a study we have just completed on genetic variation in Winter Wrens
> throughout the Holarctic reveals that they consist of a group of at least
> six previously unrecognized species.
>
> A number of additional activities this year were possible because of the
> partial or full support they received from our Ornithology Endowment. Thes=
> e
> included an expedition to Panama, a trip to the American Southwest to
> conduct a preliminary survey of habitats used by passerine birds that
> migrate for their fall molt, and participation by staff and students in two
> conferences: the North American Ornithological Conference in New Orleans,
> and the =B3The Birds of Two Worlds=B2 Conference at the Smithsonian, which
> focused on the biology of temperate-tropical migrants of the Old and New
> Worlds. =20
>
> Burke students first discovered that western passerines move to the region
> of the =B3Mexican monsoon=B2 for molting, and now so many western species have
> been discovered to do this that the area may need conservation attention.
> On our recent trip to this region, we found it hard to find concentrations
> of the species known to molt there; however, our survey suggests that these
> species primarily use lowland mesquite for molting. We seldom encountered
> even single individuals of molt-migrant species in the pine-oak woodlands w=
> e
> surveyed in mountains of Arizona or in the Sierra Madre of Sonora and
> Chihuahua. In contrast, where rain had come to the hot lowlands, we
> regularly encountered molt-migrant species in mesquite scrub. The most
> dramatic result of our survey was discovering that huge concentrations of
> Western and Cassin=B9s Kingbirds use this region for molting. Burke graduate
> student Luke Butler is now busy combining our census results with data from
> museum specimens in preparation for publishing this discovery. Thanks to
> the Ornithology Endowment we hope to take a much larger contingent of Burke
> staff and students to further examine the Southwest molt-migration system
> next summer.
>
> Endowment building has supported nearly all of these accomplishments, and w=
> e
> are fortunate that Ornithology at the Burke is relatively healthy because w=
> e
> began building endowments nearly 20 years ago. Nonetheless, enlarging our
> endowed support is urgently needed because of the continual erosion of stat=
> e
> funding for the UW. If you would like to consider joining us in supporting
> the Endowment for Ornithology, please send your name and address to Sharon
> Birks birks at u.washington.edu, and we will send you an appeal to consider.
> In this time of decreased funding for state institutions, we are
> tremendously fortunate that Barbara Eddy and Hugh Ferguson have again
> promised up to $40,000 total in dollar-for-dollar matches for contributions
> to Burke divisional endowments this year.
>
> Hope we hear from you,
>
> Sievert Rohwer
> Curator of Birds