Posters
This page contains information from the 2025 convention. This will be updated soon.
We will have a poster session on Saturday, Sept. 27 from 4:00 to 6:00 pm during our social at the Arc at Market Street, located at 555 S Market St, Frederick, MD 21701. The posters will cover avian topics by researchers or birders who are based in Maryland or nearby. We hope that this will be an opportunity for researchers and birders from our area to network, socialize and perhaps spark new projects or expand existing ones. Poster summaries are listed below.
If you are interested in participating, please contact Robin Todd at robin.todd@mdbirds.org.
Sincerely,
Robin Todd
MOS Convention Committee
Marshes for Tomorrow – Habitat Restoration for Salt Marsh Birds in Maryland
David Curson, Henrietta Bellman & Brittany Panos, Audubon Mid-Atlantic
Marshes for Tomorrow is an initiative, led by Audubon Mid-Atlantic, to conserve and restore sufficient salt marsh habitat in the face of climate-driven sea level rise to safeguard populations of salt marsh specialist birds, including the Saltmarsh Sparrow (Ammospiza caudacuta). The first on-the-ground restoration project of the initiative is at the MOS Irish Grove Sanctuary in Somerset County. Here, Audubon and partners are preparing to remedy hydrological problems by excavating shallow runnels to allow trapped water to escape from the marsh surface, and are collecting baseline data on marshbirds and other factors.
Green Cats
Karlyn McPartland, D.V.M., Cat & Dog Hospital of Columbia, MD
As people have migrated to all corners of the planet, they have brought their feline companions with them. Being incredible skilled hunters, cats are now known to be responsible for numerous extinctions world wide, including many species of birds. The twist on this is that allowing cats outside is also harmful for them, exposing them to all sorts of diseases and traumas. Outdoor cats are even harmful for their owners, as they bring home very serious and life threatening diseases from their forays outdoors. The answer? Cats don’t have to be outside to have a fulfilling life! There are a lot of strategies that can be followed to keep them inside, safe, and happy – making them “Green Cats”: environmentally friendly pets.
Preventing Bird Collisions with Windows at Home
David Mosher, Safe Skies Maryland
Safe Skies Maryland will present information about how to prevent bird collisions with windows at home. Hands-on window treatments will be available to demonstrate how easy and inexpensive solutions can save scores of birds every year.
Landscape Changes Over Time May Influence Northern Bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) on the Upper Eastern Shore of Maryland
Erin E. Baker, Natural Resources Conservation Service
David Kramar and Daniel M. Small, Washington College, Center for Environment & Society
Northern Bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) populations have showed signs of decline beginning in
the early 1900s due to a variety of factors, but most significant are habitat loss and
fragmentation due to changes in land use and land cover. In an effort to document landscape
composition and cover-type changes, we mapped landscape features along 7 breeding bird
survey routes on Maryland’s Eastern Shore in two different years, 1964 and 2019. Across the 7
BBS routes, the 5 landscape attributes that influence early successional wildlife species in an
agricultural dominated landscape changed over the 55-year period, these included amount of
agricultural land (significant decrease), development (significant increase), forest land (non-
significant change), early successional habitat (significant increase) and hedgerows (non-
significant change).
Maryland Bird Conservation Partnership: Farmland Raptor Program
Alex Pellegrini, Farmland Raptor Program
This poster presents an overview of the Maryland Bird Conservation Partnership’s Farmland Raptor Program (FRP), highlighting its mission, recent progress, and outcomes from the 2025 nesting season. It showcases occupancy data from past years, updates on American Kestrel monitoring efforts, and the impact of funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the Maryland Ornithological Society. The poster also outlines the program’s future goals to expand conservation efforts for farmland-associated raptors across the state.
Geographic Variation in Song Elements and Sequencing in the Grasshopper Sparrow
Warble Song
Rebecca Hill & Bernard Lohr, University of Maryland College Park
The secondary song of grasshopper sparrows, the ‘warble’ song, has received far less study than the primary ‘buzz’ song. We created a library of warble syllable categories from seven populations across three subspecies of grasshopper sparrows in North America using an iterative method combining both qualitative and quantitative analyses. We found that while syllable categories are shared broadly across populations, the sequence of syllables within a warble song are mostly unique to each population.
MBCP: Creating Conditions for Maryland’s Birds to Flourish
Gabriel Foley, Executive Director, Maryland Bird Conservation Partnership
Maryland Bird Conservation Partnership is working alongside partners to create conditions for birds to
flourish in Maryland’s diverse landscapes. Learn about ongoing initiatives like Bird City Maryland or our
Farmland Raptor Program, revitalized programs such as the Chimney Swift program or the MARC Youth
fund, and brand-new initiatives like the Important Bird Area assessment or the solar fields program. In
addition, find out how MBCP will use the Maryland & DC Atlas dataset to guide the region’s bird
conservation.
Welcome to the MOS Sanctuaries
Jeremy Castle, MOS Sanctuary Committee Chair
An often forgotten aspect of MOS is that we own 10 sanctuaries across Maryland totally
over 2,300 acres. These sanctuaries are not only great places to bird, hike, and observe
nature, but members can also do overnight stays at two. Stop by the poster session to
learn more about the conservation and research taking place at your MOS sanctuaries
or how you can be more involved.
Investigating the importance of song perches in Grasshopper Sparrow territoriality
Molly Cohn, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
The objective of this project is to examine habitat preferences in the context of
territoriality in the Grasshopper Sparrow (Ammodramus savannarum), an obligate grassland-
breeding bird that is declining across its range. I am using artificial song perches to determine the
role that structural cues and song transmission play in territory establishment, size, and shape,
and, ultimately, the role they play in breeding season social behavior in this species. I am
presenting results from my first season of data collection.