Avian ecologist studying the effects of land use and climate change on bird populations, with a specialization in drone-based wildlife survey methods and large-scale biodiversity datasets.
Current Chair of the Third Pennsylvania Bird Atlas Steering Committee and Chair of the Department of Environmental Studies at Gettysburg College.
After graduating with a BSc in Applied Statistics from Sheffield Hallam University (1992), I began my career working for two years in health economics research at the University of York, before joining the British Trust for Ornithology in 1994—where I spent a productive decade combining quantitative skills with a lifelong passion for birds and conservation. My work at the BTO focused on the population ecology of farmland birds across the UK, producing foundational studies on lapwing, wader, and grassland bird declines.
In 2004 I moved to the US to pursue a PhD in Ecology at Penn State, where my research examined bird population responses to conservation grasslands in Pennsylvania. Concurrent with graduate study, I spent six field seasons contributing to the Second Pennsylvania Breeding Bird Atlas and ultimately served as lead editor of the resulting 612-page volume published by Penn State University Press in 2012.
Following a postdoctoral fellowship at the US Geological Survey at Patuxent, I joined the faculty at Gettysburg College in 2011, where I have built a research program around three themes: the ecology and conservation of bird populations at landscape and regional scales; the development of drone-based survey methods for wildlife monitoring; and the analysis of large citizen-science datasets including breeding bird atlases and camera trap networks. I am currently a Professor and Chair of the Department of Environmental Studies, and Chair of the Third Pennsylvania Bird Atlas Steering Committee.
A central feature of my work at Gettysburg is deep engagement with undergraduate researchers. More than fifteen students have completed honors theses under my supervision, co-authoring papers published in outlets including The Auk, Drones, and Neotropical Biodiversity.
Department of Environmental Studies
Gettysburg College, Box 2455
300 N. Washington St.
Gettysburg, PA 17325 USA
Tel: (717) 337 6072
Ph.D. Ecology
Pennsylvania State University, 2009
BSc Applied Statistics (with honours)
Sheffield Hallam University, UK, 1992
As Chair of the Steering Committee, I am leading the planning and execution of the Third Pennsylvania Bird Atlas — a statewide coordinated survey that will document the current distribution and abundance of all breeding and wintering bird species across the Commonwealth. Building on the Second Atlas (2004–2009), the third iteration incorporates eBird-integrated data submission, advanced occupancy modelling, and the largest volunteer coordination effort in Pennsylvania ornithological history.
My lab has developed and refined methods for estimating songbird abundance using unoccupied aircraft systems (UAS) equipped with passive acoustic recorders. Recent work demonstrates high efficiency compared to traditional point counts, and ongoing projects are optimizing detector placement, flight altitude, and automated species identification to make drone surveys a practical tool for large-scale monitoring.
Using a combination of audio recording of flight calls and weather surveillance radar, I am investigating the timing, intensity, and composition of nocturnal bird migration over central Maryland and Pennsylvania. This work addresses fundamental questions about migration phenology and its relationship to weather, season, and broader population trends.
I contribute to several national-scale collaborative efforts including the SNAPSHOT USA camera trap network (coordinated surveys of US mammal communities since 2019) and continue analyses of breeding bird atlas and eBird datasets to examine how land use, urbanization, and climate change drive changes in bird community composition across the eastern US.
Collaborative work with students examined the vulnerability of elevation-restricted endemic birds of the Talamancan Montane Forests (Costa Rica and Panama) to climate change, using species distribution modelling to project range losses under future warming scenarios.
In collaboration with Penn State researchers, we quantified the regional-scale impacts of hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae) invasion on North American forest bird communities, linking hemlock decline detected in remote sensing data to long-term changes in bird occupancy derived from atlas datasets.
* denotes co-authored with Gettysburg College students | Full list on Google Scholar →
The same close observation that drives my scientific work also finds expression in visual art — from vector silhouettes used in scientific publications worldwide, to digital painting and field photography of birds across two continents.
Vector silhouettes contributed to PhyloPic — the open database of life silhouettes used in scientific publications, textbooks, and educational materials worldwide. All freely available under Creative Commons licensing. Click any image to view on PhyloPic.
8 of 548 contributed silhouettes — hover for species name, click to view on PhyloPic.