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The Ontario Field Ornithologists’ (OFO) 2016 Distinguished Ornithologist Award was presented to Jean Iron. Jean has been a constant presence and leading figure in OFO for almost 25 years. She’s been at the head of the line when something needed doing and she seems to always have been present when things were happening. From her service on the OFO Board and her presidency, to her role on OFO’s publications, to representing OFO on provincial committees, to being among the first to acknowledge and thanking our partners and patrons, Jean is someone we have come to depend upon. Although Jean needs little introduction to OFO, her life and her contributions to OFO, ornithology in Ontario and beyond deserve elaboration here.

Jean was born in Wales into a family who loved nature and the countryside, giving her a foundation for her life to come. She emigrated to Canada in 1967 where she obtained a Masters of Education at the University of Toronto. She put her education to work as a teacher, consultant and school principal for the Toronto Catholic School Board from 1967 to 1999 when she retired from the teaching profession. Despite her family’s love of the outdoors, Jean’s interest in birds did not begin until the latter stages of her teaching career. In about 1989, she met Dave Milsom and Jim Coey, who owned Flora and Fauna Field Tours. They took Jean on birding excursions in Ontario and to Churchill, Manitoba, which were then followed by trips to Costa Rica and Argentina. Jim and Dave also introduced Jean to the Ontario Field Ornithologists. She became a member in 1991 and quite quickly became a part of OFO activities, taking part in the publication project that culminated in “Ornithology in Ontario” in 1994 and was elected President immediately thereafter.

During Jean’s presidency of OFO (1995-2004), the organization developed substantially and her roles in annual conventions set a benchmark for that task. She also excelled as the “unofficial” OFO convention photographer. During and after Jean’s presidency, she served OFO in numerous external capacities as well, including representing our interests on many birding and conservation committees. Jean represented OFO on the Ontario Shorebird Conservation Plan committee from 2000-2003, on the Ontario Landbird Conservation Plan team in 2008 and as a member of the Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas Management Committee from 2000 to 2007. Following her departure from the President’s position, Jean stepped directly into a position serving on the Ontario Bird Records Committee (OBRC) as a voting member from 2005 to 2009 and chaired the OBRC in 2008. Here she applied her extensive expertise in identification of and knowledge about shorebirds, gulls, geese and other bird groups.

Jean proudly lists her special interest in a number of bird families, but those which draw the greatest amount of her attention are gulls, shorebirds, geese, finches and grassland birds. Her love of gulls is apparent to all who know her. One of her notable contributions was the documentation of Ontario’s first Heermann’s Gull and an article about its molts and plumages, co-authored with Ron Pittaway. She has introduced countless people to the joys (and pitfalls!) of gull watching and plumage cycle identification, and shared her knowledge about gulls in other ways, one of the most significant being her leadership of annual Niagara Gull Watch field trips which she has co-led from 2000 to 2016. She also organized and presented pre-field trip gull identification workshops in 2014, 2015 and 2016.

Jean’s special interest in shorebirds is also well known and it has kept her busy in both southern and northern Ontario. One of her most impressive and well-used publications is her “Shorebirds of Southern Ontario” photographic identification guide. Her expertise in photography as well as on molts and plumages shines through in the images throughout the book. During spring migration season, she gives identification workshops at the Point Pelee National Park Visitor Centre timed to coordinate with the OFO shorebirds trips at Hillman Marsh. In northern Ontario, she has volunteered on a variety of research and monitoring projects since 2002, many specifically aimed at gaining better information and knowledge about shorebird migration ecology. She assisted with during Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (OMNR) shorebird monitoring and climate changes studies at Shegogau, northwest of Moosonee, in 2005, with shorebird surveys in spring and late summer at Akimiski Island in 2008, and with shorebird surveys and climate change at Burntpoint Creek in Polar Bear Provincial Park in 2012. She’s been in the field in all eight years of the Southern James Bay Shorebird project (2009-2016) at one or sometimes two month-long sessions, contributing substantially to data gathered for this, a multi-organization program whose aim is to document the critical importance of James Bay to migrating shorebirds which may eventually lead to habitat protection. A highly valued spinoff of this annual participation has been her weekly postings to OntBirds via remote communications methods in partnership with Ron Pittaway. These postings have allowed Ontario birders and those beyond its borders to experience in near-real-time the phenomenal migration of shorebirds in James Bay. Participating in OMNR goose research at Burntpoint in 2002, 2003 and 2006 caused Jean fall in love with the Hudson Bay Lowlands. One of Jean’s most enduring and significant accomplishments for bird conservation in Ontario has been her work on the initiative to protect the Carden Alvar for its value to this rare habitat and the grasslands and wetlands bird communities it supports. She served on the committee with Nature Conservancy of Canada, Toronto Ornithological Club and Couchiching Conservancy to plan land purchases and raise funds which eventually led to the establishment of Carden Alvar Provincial Park in 2014. Jean continues to advocate for protection of the Carden Alvar’s grassland bird habitat, including that of the endangered Loggerhead Shrike.. She took a hands-on approach to the task in 2012 serving as the Celebrity Birder for the Couchiching Conservancy’s Carden Challenge fund-raising effort for Carden Alvar. In 2016 she accepted a position on the Advisory Council of the Couchiching Conservancy, a land trust in the Lake Simcoe and Carden area. .Jean is an author or co-author of over 50 articles and notes about birds and bird conservation (See Selected References). She is a regular (almost annual) contributor to OFO’s two publication outlets, OFO News and Ontario Birds. She was editor of OFO News from 1994-2007 and continues to serve as an editorial assistant. In addition, she has published many articles in the Toronto Ornithological Club Newsletter and Toronto Birds and was a co-author of the Ontario Shorebird Conservation Plan.

Jean seems never to be idle and that energy is often directed at things to do with birds. In addition to all of the above-noted projects, she also participated in field work for the Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas (2001-2005), was a surveyor of Red Knots and other shorebirds on the Mingan Archipelago, Quebec, for the Royal Ontario Museum in 2007, has been a Lake Ontario Winter Waterfowl Survey participant every January for over 20 years, a Whimbrel Watch participant at Colonel Sam Smith Park in Toronto annually since 2007, a Cranberry Marsh Hawkwatch participant from September to November since 1999 (including as official counter one day per week), a Plover Guardian for the Piping Plovers nesting on Toronto Islands in June 2015 and sometimes she even gets paid (e.g., she had contract bird survey positions with the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority from 2001 to 2004). She is also an active member of the Toronto Ornithological Club, the American Birding Association, the Nature Conservancy of Canada and the Brodie Club. Jean has introduced or influenced the birding habits of hundreds of people through her workshops and annual OFO trips and as a mentor throughout her eight years of volunteering on the James Bay shorebird project, particularly to young Moose Cree First Nations participants. She has informed and delighted thousands through her superb photography by sharing it on her website which is wonderfully informational and educational. Prominently featured are her annual trip photo essays which have recently been enhanced with videos. The content she provides on research and monitoring programs is worth its weight in helicopter fuel; I have personally highlighted this unique contribution to a succession of Ontario government senior managers and communications officers. It is an innovative means of communicating what OMNR does with taxpayers’ money in support of the conservation of migratory bird populations and habitats through research and monitoring.

She is also a regular presenter at birding and nature clubs and other organizations throughout Ontario. She has been invited to be keynote speakers at several festivals of birds, including Point Pelee Festival of Birds (2009), Ruthven Park National Historic Park Festival (2010), Huron Fringe Festival of Birds (2011), Rondeau Provincial Park Festival of Birds (2011) and has traveled to give similar presentations in Buffalo, New York, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and to the Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History in Jamestown, New York. Her presentation topics include Arctic Wildlife of Canada, Iceland and Greenland, gull watching in Ontario, shorebird migration, Hudson Bay and James Bay shorebirds and wetlands, Akimiski Island natural history, the Carden Alvar, the Northwest Passage, High Arctic expeditions from Greenland to Nunavut, and the birds and natural history of Costa Rica, Panama, Peru and the Galapagos. Another way Jean has contributed to the public’s awareness and knowledge has been as a naturalist tour leader. She has led tours since 1999 to locations in Ontario including: Point Pelee and Georgian Bay (a cruise) as well as beyond Ontario’s borders to Cuba, Honduras, Belize, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, the Canadian Arctic, Greenland, Svalbard (in the Norwegian Arctic), Japan, French Polynesia, Iceland, Ecuador and Peru. It is safe to assume that Jean’s list of special interest birds will only grow longer as she is introduced to new groups through her travels, because it is characteristic of Jean to dive deeply into subjects that pique her interest, and we all benefit from that inner drive. She is an integral part of the success story of Ontario Field Ornithologists and is greatly deserving of this award. She is now a life member of OFO and for many of us, “OFO” and “Jean Iron” have become nearly synonymous.

Selected Publications:

Iron, J. 1994. Towhees tumble. OFO News 12(3):1.

Iron, J. and R. Pittaway. 1995. Pileated Woodpecker eating dogwood berries. Ontario Birds 13:28-29.

Iron, J. 1995. Cosmopolitan Caspians. OFO News 13(1):7.

Iron, J. 1996. Double-scratchers. OFO News 14(3):8.

Iron, J. 1997.Grackles catching fish. Ontario Birds 15:79-80.

Iron, J. 1997. Hawk herbalists. OFO News 15(1):10.

Iron, J. 1998. Kestrels and Green Darners. OFO News 16(1):12.

Iron, J. 1998. Brewer’s Blackbirds: On Hold?. OFO News 16(3):10.

Iron, J. and N. Murr. 1999. Thieving wigeons. OFO News 17(1):9.

Iron, J. 2000. Caspian Tern night roost on roof. Ontario Birds 18:130-133.

Iron, J. and R. Pittaway. 2001.Molts and plumages of Ontario’s Heermann’s Gull. Ontario Birds 19:65-78.

Iron, J. 2002. Kinglet killer. OFO News 20(2):8-9.

Ross, R. K., K.F. Abraham, J. Iron, D. McLachlin, R.D. James and B. Collins. 2003. Ontario Shorebird Conservation Plan. Canadian Wildlife Service, Ottawa, Ontario.48 pp.

Pittaway, R. and J. Iron. 2005. Ageing and Variation of Great Gray Owls. Ontario Birds 23:138-146.

Pittaway, R. and J. Iron. 2006. Erythristic Rose-breasted Grosbeak. Ontario Birds 24:2-5.

Iron, J. 2009. Snyder’s and Labrador Great Horned Owls in Toronto. Toronto Birds 3(1):18-22.

Iron, J. 2009. Book Review: Shorebirds of North America, Europe and Asia. Toronto Ornithological Club Newsletter 200:11-12.

Iron, J. 2010. The launch of Niagara Birds. Toronto Ornithological Club Newsletter 209:5-6.

Iron, J. 2010. Tagged Whimbrel. Toronto Ornithological Club Newsletter 207:9.

Iron, J. 2010. Volunteering for bird conservation on James Bay. Toronto Ornithological Club Newsletter 209:3-4.

Iron, J. and R. Pittaway. 2010. Who was Mrs. Gordon Mills? The life of artist and ornithologist Doris Huestis Speirs. Toronto Ornithological Club Newsletter 201:2-3.

Iron, J. and R. Pittaway. 2011. Willow Ptarmigan at Darlington Nuclear. OFO News 29(2):6-7.

Iron, J. 2011. Rosetta McClain Gardens Raptor Watch. Toronto Ornithological Club Newsletter 219:7.

Iron, J. 2011. Leucistic Trumpeter Swan at Bluffer’s Park in Toronto. Toronto Ornithological Club Newsletter 213:5-6.

Iron, J. 2011. Greater Snow Geese on the St. Lawrence River in Ontario. Toronto Ornithological Club Newsletter 214:3-5.

Iron, J. and R. Pittaway. 2011. Mystery disappearance of House Sparrows. Toronto Ornithological Club Newsletter 215:3-4.

Iron, J. 2011. Volunteering for bird conservation on James Bay. OFO News 29(1):1-3.

Iron, J. and R. Pittaway 2012. Loggerhead Shrike from Carden Alvar in Virginia. OFO News 30(1): 5.

Iron, J. 2012. Dark morph Red-tailed Hawks: calurus or abieticola? Toronto Ornithological Club Newsletter 222:4-6.

Iron, J. 2012. Smew and North America Big Year. Toronto Ornithological Club Newsletter 221:3-4.

Iron, J. 2013. Shorebirds and climate change. OFO News 31(2):1-5.

Iron, J. and R. Pittaway. 2014. Spring shorebirds at Hillman Marsh. OFO News 32(1):1-4.

Iron, J. 2015. Shorebirds of Southern Ontario: Photographic guide to ID shorebirds. Hawk Owl Publishing. Bowmanville, Ontario. 38 pp.

Iron, J. 2016. Common Loons flying with open bills. OFO News 34(2):6-7.

This year’s recipient of the Distinguished Ornithologist Award is D.V. (Chip) Weseloh. Chip is well known to many Ontario birders but some highlights of his background will be important to those who may not know him or know why he was given this award. His contributions include: outstanding scientific research, long-term service to Ontario Field Ornithologists (OFO), his ability to communicate science, and his passion for birds, especially colonial waterbirds.

Chip is an emeritus wildlife biologist who worked for the Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS), part of Environment Canada, in Burlington and Downsview for over 35 years. Prior to his CWS position, he completed graduate studies on colonial waterbirds, worked as a bird tour leader, a museum curator in Alberta and an environmental consultant.

Chip grew up in a small town in south-central Minnesota where his initial interest in birds developed during duck hunting trips with his father and younger brother. Driving country roads, scouting feeding areas and figuring out where the ducks would be the next morning, spurred his interests in birds and their behaviour.

During his undergraduate years at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, Chip’s ecology professor happened to mention that repeated defecation, from Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias), over the edge of their arboreal nests, over time, changed the herbaceous vegetation growing beneath their nests. He undertook a class project on this topic and then continued the research for his M.Sc. degree from Michigan Technological University (Weseloh and Brown 1972). Intrigued by the roosting and feeding flights he had seen of the herons during that research, Chip went on to complete a Ph.D. at the University of Calgary on the local movements and urban ecology of Ring-billed Gulls (Larus delawarensis). He became hooked on colonial waterbirds and when asked why, he notes, “Usually when you find one or two of them nesting, you find hundreds. They’re easy to find, easy to count, easy to catch and easy to work with and they’re fun!” Starting employment with the CWS in 1978, Chip was the lead field biologist with the Great Lakes Herring Gull Annual Egg Monitoring Project where his duties involved collecting Herring Gull (Larus argentatus) eggs for contaminant analysis and monitoring reproductive success along with super normal clutches and skeletal deformities at select colonies in each of the Great Lakes. He also periodically investigated contaminant levels in other colonial waterbirds: Common Terns (Sterna hirundo), Caspian Terns (Hyropogne caspia), Black Terns (Childonis niger), Double-crested Cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus), Great Black-backed Gulls (Larus marinus) and Black-crowned Night-Herons (Nycticorax nycticorax). This was all part of the Great Lakes Wildlife Toxic Chemical Surveillance Program. He maintained that position throughout his 35 years with CWS; the project is now the longest continuous annual wildlife toxicology sampling program in the world.

In 1998, with the retirement of Dr. Hans Blokpoel from CWS, Chip inherited the responsibility for the conservation of Great Lakes colonial waterbirds along with his usual role of monitoring contaminant levels and population effects in Herring Gulls and other waterbirds. With this new responsibility, his research field expanded to include the decadal censuses of colonial waterbirds on all of the Canadian Great Lakes (a three year undertaking every ten years), annual monitoring of the expanding population of the Double-crested Cormorants on the four Canadian Great Lakes, satellite tagging and tracking of Herring and Great Black-backed Gulls on the upper Great Lakes and Lake Ontario. He also began monitoring numbers of Little Gulls (Larus minutus) at Oshawa Second Marsh (their most predictable and populous gathering site in North America) and developing the Little Gull Viewing Week-end (assisted by Tyler Hoar and Richard Joos). He was also able to start extensive colour-marking of Great Egrets (Ardea alba) at their colonies and recruit citizen scientists to assist in reporting re-sightings, as well as censusing their roosting sites during spring and fall (more than 70 sites have been identified so far). Chip, with his co-workers, have published over 200 peer reviewed journal articles, government reports, technical reports, book chapters and progress reports. Likewise, he has given dozens of presentations. His list of co-authors on these publications and presentations is impressive and speaks to Chip’s ability to collaborate effectively with a wide variety of scientists and citizen scientists, both within Ontario and Canada as well as internationally.

For his efforts, he received the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal in 2003 for contributions to ornithological science and bird conservation. The value of his research was recognized in 2012 by his co-workers when they formally proposed to Geographic Naming Canada that a set of rocks (and the gull, night-heron, cormorant and egret colonies on them) in the rapids just above Niagara Falls be officially named “Weseloh Rocks”. In 2014, his research was also recognized when he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association of Great Lakes Research.

Chip first became interested in birding as a hobby while attending graduate school at the University of Calgary. His supervisor, who was also president of the local naturalist club, required all his students to take part in club activities and lead field trips. Chip obliged and immersed himself in birds other than waterbirds. His interest drew him into the birding world in short order.

In the late 1970s, he and his wife, Linda, were two of the founding executive of OFO and he remembers the heady planning meetings of the day: “Those were exciting meetings. Figuring out who was going to do what, what we were going to call ourselves, how we were going to get started with a big bang and what our logo was to be”. He not only served as President in those early days (1986-87) but also, due to his interest in writing, he and Linda were the first editors of the new journal, Ontario Birds, from 1982 to 1984.

Chip and Linda live in Toronto but their favorite birding haunts are on the eastern edge of the city, so naturally they became active in the Pickering Field Naturalists and Chip served as its President from 1980 to 1982. Nationally and internationally, he is active in the Waterbird Society, acting as its President during 2010-2011 and, before that, organizing its meeting in Niagara Falls in 2001. He has also been a board member of the Long Point Bird Observatory and the Ontario Bird Banding Association. He spends his summers, with his family, on Garden Island, a 26 ha island in Kingston harbour.

Chip is always interested in field work and is known to remark, “A bad day in the field is better than a good day in the office”. One of his ongoing projects has been to band and wing-tag young Great Egrets at their nests and then track their post-fledging movements. His use of volunteer birders to report sightings is an excellent example of a “citizen science” research project that the public has bought into enthusiastically. He maintains a network of volunteers across the province and continent for reporting tagged egrets. He also enjoys watching, and documenting, egrets and other birds (e.g. American Crows, Corvus brachyrhynchos), going to roost, a time when most birders are winding down from their day, and has taken many birders for a dusk watch that is never forgotten.

Chip has been an enthusiastic mentor for numerous young scientists, technicians, students and volunteers. Always one to encourage and support others, Chip has this advice for those looking for a career in biology or conservation: “I can’t over-estimate the value of volunteerism. In this day and age, it seems like the competition for bird jobs is very high and there are fewer and fewer of them. Do whatever you have to do to get your foot in the door. Make yourself indispensable to whomever you can do volunteer work for. Several of the people I’ve hired over the years at CWS started out as volunteers for us.”

Chip is a recognized scientist, an active keen birder and an active supporter and contributor to OFO and Ontario Birds, who enjoys sharing his knowledge. He is well deserving of the OFO Distinguished Ornithologist Award.

We both take great pleasure in being able to nominate Clive Goodwin for the 2014 OFO Distinguished Ornithologist Award. Clive has been a leader in Ontario field ornithology and conservation for nearly our entire lifetime and his selection as a recipient of this award is certainly well deserved.

Clive was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, England, where his earliest recollection of watching birds dates back to the age of five. By his teenage years, he had already started a birdwatching society at Castleford Grammar School in the village of Garforth, for which he received the Rotary service prize for outstanding public service upon his graduation.

After a two year conscription period in the Royal Air Force, he emigrated with his family to Toronto in 1949. He worked from 1949 to 1965 at the Canadian General Electric Company, working his way up to Production Control Manager at its electronics factory. He also completed his Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Toronto in 1962.

Clive’s involvement in leadership roles within the Ontario natural history community was swift and it certainly blossomed into a lifelong commitment. From 1965 until 1977, he was fortunate to find a job more in keeping with his personal interests when he was appointed Executive Director of the Conservation Council of Ontario, the umbrella organization of the province’s conservation groups. His work there included the preparation and presentation of briefs to various levels of government on a wide variety of resource issues, the organization of conferences and seminars, and the editing of all council proceedings. Topics he became involved with were as diverse as wildlife management, conservation education, soil erosion, extinction, air pollution, water pollution, roads issues, and issues involving solid waste and recycling. He also edited their quarterly publication, The Bulletin.

Clive has amassed quite a prodigious output of volunteer activities on behalf of a myriad of Ontario nature clubs: On behalf of the Toronto Field Biologist Club, he served as Associate Editor of their journal, the Ontario Field Biologist, from 1957 to 1959, and served as a member of their executive committee from 1957-1959 and 1961-1964. For the Toronto Ornithological Club, he served as Business Secretary from 1956-1958 and served on their executive council from 1978-1988. From 1968 to 1982, he took over the organization of the Lake Ontario Mid-Winter Waterfowl Inventory from Ott Devitt, and went on to expand that count to include the entire Canadian shoreline of Lake Ontario. This important data set now demonstrates trends in winter waterfowl numbers in the Greater Toronto Area for an unbroken series of 69 years and the entire Canadian shore of Lake Ontario for 25 years.

For the Federation of Ontario Naturalists (FON) (now Ontario Nature), Clive served as editor of The Young Naturalist from 1959-1961, edited their magazine The Ontario Naturalist (predecessor to Seasons, now ON Nature) from 1962-1965, and wrote their ‘Worth Noting’ bird column from 1962-1967 and 1975-1982. He served as an elective board member from 1962-1966 and as an executive committee member from 1964-1965. He led FON field trips to the Bruce Peninsula for many years as well as trips to England, France and Spain. It was through the FON that Clive met his wife Joy. He also contributed the Toronto section to their 1964 A Naturalist’s Guide to Ontario and the Northumberland County section to its 1997 follow-up A Nature Guide to Ontario. Between 1968 and 1972, he served the Toronto Field Naturalists, first as Chair of the Bird Studies Group, and later as Vice-President and President.

For a truly astounding 18 years (1965-1982), Clive served as the editor of the Ontario section of Audubon Field Notes (later American Birds, now North American Birds), the journal of record for notable field observations in North America. This involved producing a quarterly four-thousand word summary of noteworthy bird observations for the whole province from a network of up to 300 observers and several dozen sub-regional editors. Anyone who has ever edited a report for a single quarter will appreciate the enormity of this accomplishment. To this very day, he still serves as a subregional editor for Northumberland County. In 1970, frustrated by the often arbitrary nature of decisions forced upon his work in Audubon Field Notes (particularly in light of the recent passing of Jim Baillie, the Royal Ontario Museum’s Assistant Curator of Ornithology), Clive was instrumental in organizing the province’s first attempt at a system of peer review of rare bird sightings by overseeing the formation of the Ontario Ornithological Records Committee and acting as its Secretary until 1982. It was the precursor to the current Ontario Bird Records Committee, which was subsequently formed along with the establishment of the Ontario Field Ornithologists in 1982, and thus extends the era of peer review of rare birds in Ontario back to an impressive period of forty-five years.

Clive has been very active in organized field work in Ontario. From 1953 to 1960 he conducted winter bird population studies that were published annually in Audubon Field Notes. Likewise, from 1955 to 1969 he conducted breeding bird population surveys that were also published in Audubon Field Notes.

Between 1950 and 2005, he had a 56 year unbroken series of participation in the annual Christmas Bird Count on either the Toronto or Cobourg counts. Similarly, he has participated in nearly every one of the 68 annual Lake Ontario Mid-Winter Waterfowl Inventory counts each January. Between 1980 and 1985, he was on the management committee for the first Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas and was a very active atlasser in several regions. From 2001 to 2005, he was a member of the local Northumberland County organizing committee for the second Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas and was an active atlasser once again.

In 1977, Clive left his position as Executive Director of the Conservation Council of Ontario to take a position as the Executive Director of Toronto’s Civic Garden Centre managing a public enterprise with 27 staff and 160 volunteers and a membership of 2600 people.

By 1981, Clive and Joy made the decision to work independently as freelance naturalists. As Clive puts it: “Very quickly we decided to offer nature courses and do nature interpretation, including leading trips. My role proved to be providing the ‘nature’ part, while Joy provided support and handled the more ‘people’ parts of the enterprise.” They began to teach bird identification courses through the Civic Garden Centre, Humber and Seneca community colleges, the Brentwood, Deer Park and Orchard-view public libraries, as well as from their home. They also hosted waterfowl viewing days for the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources at sites like Toronto’s Humber Bay, Peel’s Rattray Marsh and Durham’s Corner Marsh. Demand dictated that they offer selected field trips to a wide variety of Ontario locations, including Point Pelee National Park, Presqu’ile Provincial Park, Long Point Provincial Park, Hilton Falls/Mountsberg Conservation Area, Niagara Falls, Tiny Marsh/ Minesing Swamp, the Durham Region marshes from Pickering to Oshawa, Dundas Marsh, Holland Marsh, Uxbridge forest and Luther Marsh, Prince Edward County and the Bruce Peninsula. They also went on to organize and conduct much longer trips to places such as Alberta, British Columbia, Churchill and southern Manitoba, Grand Manan, Newfoundland, southern Arizona, southern California, Florida, Texas, and farther afield to Australia, New Zealand, Costa Rica, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United Kingdom (England and Scotland). Clive and Joy enriched the knowledge and birding skills of scores of Ontario naturalists in this period.

Clive is perhaps most widely known for his five major publications dealing with bird finding. Inspired by the very popular Toronto Birdfinding bulletins published in the 1960s by Peter Iden, Clive recognized the need for a standard reference to make the multitude of new birders familiar with the most productive birding sites in the Toronto area. In 1977, he began the field work, writing, editing and design of his 97 page Toronto Bird Finding Guide, published by the Toronto Field Naturalists in 1979. Even many long-time Toronto area birders learned a lot of new locations from this book. In 1982, University of Toronto Press published the first edition of Clive’s 248 page A Bird-Finding Guide to Ontario. This handy guide made birders familiar with many of the best birding locations throughout Ontario, how to get to them, and what to see there at particular times of the year. Although many of the veteran birders in Ontario were in the regular habit of covering their local sewage lagoons, sod farms and landfill sites, this guide was the first to introduce the next generation of birders to the very productive results of birding at such locations, and provided directions to almost all of these previously seldom sought out sites, and truly popularized this as a normal part of birding practice in Ontario.

In 1988, Clive and Joy independently published their expanded 153 page second edition of their A Birdfinding Guide to the Toronto Region. This new edition added sections on new sites, provided a newly-researched set of occurrence bar charts to demonstrate the abundance and seasonal status of all bird species, and provided a summary of the status of all the various rarities on the Toronto checklist. It has served as an excellent resource and starting point for those interested in birding throughout the Greater Toronto Area ever since. In 1995, University of Toronto Press published the greatly expanded and revised 477 page second edition of A Bird-Finding Guide to Ontario. At one time or another, most of the birders we know have had this volume either in their car or their library. Its proven utility and commercial viability no doubt encouraged the production of more detailed local bird finding guides, excellent examples of which are the Point Pelee guide written by Tom Hince and the Long Point and area guide by Ron Ridout.

In 1990, Clive and Joy moved from Toronto to Cobourg, where they eventually retired in 1996. Already familiar with Presqu’ile Provincial Park, they began to immerse themselves in a project to explore all of the roads of Northumberland County, an area with a rich ornithological history dating back to the early 18th century exploits of Charles Fothergill, the father of Ontario ornithology himself. Although the prevailing conventional wisdom of the scientific community had long tended to dismiss the potential value in birders’ observations, Clive always held to the position that, cumulatively, these could yield valuable information not otherwise easily available. With this aim in mind, he convinced the Willow Beach Field Naturalists to embark on a mission to computerize all of the available Northumberland County bird records into a relational database. Fast forward 25 years to the era of eBird, and one sees that the scientific community has come back to Clive’s line of thinking on such matters and Clive’s vision begins to look as clear as that of Nostradamus! In conjunction with Dr. Steve Furino of the University of Waterloo, Clive and the Willow Beach Field Naturalists have created a database approaching 400,000 bird records for Northumberland County. Since 2007, they have also worked diligently to see all of these data (in the form of 38,503 general club ‘checklists’ and 9,381 personal ‘checklists’ of Clive’s own records) exported into eBird, thus enabling access to the general public. However, not content to merely compile the data, Clive set to work on writing a monograph on the Birds of Northumberland County using the data. He has shared this monograph freely as an electronic document via a web site of the Willow Beach Field Naturalist at: http://www.willowbeachfieldnaturalists.org/assets/bird-assets/downloads/Birds.pdf

If Clive’s only accomplishments had been his editorial tenure at Audubon Field Notes/American Birds and his bird finding guides, he would easily still qualify for this award, but we think you can see that his vision and determination have blessed us all with a much more comprehensive body of work to benefit from for many years to come.

Clive has been the recipient of several other awards. In 1976, he was awarded the Distinguished Public Service Award of the Federation of Ontario Naturalists. In 1977, he was awarded Honorary Life Membership in the Conservation Council of Ontario. In 2009, he was awarded the Doris Huestis Speirs Award for outstanding contributions to Canadian Ornithology by the Society of Canadian Ornithologists. In 2010, he was awarded Honorary Life Membership by the Willow Beach Field Naturalists. Congratulations on your award Clive — it is certainly richly deserved.

Jon McCracken is a modest, low-key kind of person, who surely does not think of himself as a “Distinguished Ornithologist.” Yet, there is scarcely a person more immersed in learning about Ontario and Canada’s birds, or more deeply involved in working for their welfare. People who don’t know Jon personally are nonetheless very likely to know about the programs he has helped organize and the conservation issues he has brought to the forefront of the birding and ornithological world.

After graduating from the University of Western Ontario (UWO) in 1977, Jon took on what may be a record number of biology contract positions. Over a period of 12 years, he worked on encephalitis incidence in birds, ran the banding program at Long Point Bird Observatory, monitored paper mill effluent, studied lead-shot poisoning of waterfowl, evaluated wetland quality, examined the impact of logging on heronries and undertook a slew of floral, faunal and habitat surveys. Jon’s employers included non-governmental organizations (Norfolk Field Naturalists, Long Point Bird Observatory), business and academic institutions (Eurocan Pulp and Paper, LGL Ltd., Western University [WU]) and government (Canadian Wildlife Service, Transport Canada, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, Ontario Ministry of Health, Grand River Conservation Authority).

While many biologists do contract work while looking for a ‘real’ job, they often bail out of biology altogether, or go back to school if one of those doesn”t come along. Jon did consider returning to university for a graduate degree, but he was a good biologist and other opportunities kept arising, and he loved what he was doing. Although he admits to having some regrets about not pursuing another degree, it’s not for the reason you might think – that it might have led him on a different career path. Rather, like a true scientist, he regrets the lost learning opportunities.

Indeed, life-long learning is one of Jon’s main satisfactions, and certainly one of his greatest assets. When he told me about his mentors, who included David Hussell and Michael Bradstreet at Long Point, Dave Ankney and Dave Scott at WU, and later on, Don Sutherland and Mary Gartshore, Jon noted that he learned ‘a ton’ from these people and from many others along the way.

When many of us think of mentors, we generally consider the ones that influence us as adults, but those people and incidents that fan the early spark are equally, if not more, important. Jon spent his early years in the Prairies, where he was fascinated by flight, both of birds and airplanes. There was a cage in his backyard where, as in many Prairie homes of the era, wild birds were sometimes kept. Jon remembers that cage at various times holding a Black-billed Magpie (Pica hudsonia), a Northern Harrier (Circus cyaneus) and a Short-eared Owl (Asio flammeus). An older brother who liked to draw birds introduced Jon to more formal ornithology. After the family moved to Ottawa, this brother took Jon, then in Grade 3, to look at bird skins at the Museum of Nature. Jon was awed at meeting real professionals – Earl Godfrey and Stu MacDonald – and was greatly impressed. (Indeed, he suspects he was also impressed by his brother surreptitiously whacking him to curb his enthusiasm.) Another seminal experience was receiving a gift of Fred Bodworth’s classic book The Last of the Curlews. Later, Jon was thrilled to meet and get to know the author. Many of us in the Ontario Field Ornithologists have opportunities to provide such experiences to a young person who is showing interest, and we sometimes need to remind ourselves how important a little encouragement can be.

Jon advanced steadily during his long period of contract work. Starting as an assistant, he rose to the person in charge of study design, training, project management and preparation of reports – all skills he has used daily in the full-time positions he has held at Bird Studies Canada since 1989: first as Manager for the Migration Monitoring Program, then Ontario Programs Manager, and now National Programs Manager.

Jon’s career at Bird Studies Canada, as with his earlier contract work, has been incredibly varied. He has been responsible for special surveys of loons, marsh birds, Red-shouldered Hawks (Buteo lineatus), nocturnal owls, certain woodpeckers, and programs such as migration monitoring, the Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas, Great Backyard Bird Count, training of Latin American biologists, and a variety of species-at-risk assessment and recovery programs. While the job at Bird Studies Canada (BSC) is more than full time, it is far from everything that Jon does. He is also a valuable member of innumerable committees, boards and panels. His curriculum vitae lists 28 committees, including many species-at-risk recovery teams, the North American Banding Council and the North American Ornithological Atlas Committee. Jon is also a subject editor for the journal Avian Conservation and Ecology.

Not even included in this list of 28 is perhaps the most influential group with which Jon serves, the Bird Species Specialist Subcommittee of COSEWIC (the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada). As co-chair of this subcommittee, Jon shares the lead in identifying candidate species for assessment, tendering contracts for status reports of those candidates, evaluating subsequent reports and making appropriate recommendations for official COSEWIC status. The work involves many time-consuming administrative duties, and Jon gets the job done – but I suspect his most important contribution is clear-headed thinking about the kinds and quality of evidence needed to confidently assign an appropriate conservation status.

On top of his job at BSC and his committee service to the ornithological community, Jon is also a prolific writer. While he has relatively few research papers published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, his bibliography of about 160 articles is replete with technical reports, species status assessments, recovery plans, training manuals and data-rich articles that raise awareness of the informed public about bird study and avian conservation issues (including several in Ontario Birds). His publications not only reflect the great variety of programs and projects in which he has been involved (see sample below), but also demonstrate a most enviable facility for clear communication. One might think that Jon’s administrative responsibilities, committee work and writing would be sufficient to keep him busy, but he refuses to be cut off from doing field work. Jon is out nearly every morning during the field season, keeping in touch with the birds that his work is really about.

To summarize Jon’s contributions to ornithology in Ontario and Canada, then, I would say that he is a well-rounded birder and field man, a talented administrator and designer of field programs, an excellent writer and a hands-on conservation biologist – altogether a combination that makes him more than worthy of the title of “Distinguished Ornithologist.”