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Home
About PIBO
Research
Outreach
Events
News
Newsletter
- Current Issue
- The Auspice Archive
Shop
- Shop All
- Testaments by Margaret Atwood
Get Involved
Contact
- Connect with PIBO
- Visit PIBO

Home
About PIBO
Research
Outreach
Events
News
Newsletter
- Current Issue
- The Auspice Archive
Shop
- Shop All
- Testaments by Margaret Atwood
Get Involved
Contact
- Connect with PIBO
- Visit PIBO

Contact Us

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PIBO Location

585 South Shore Road, Pelee Island, ON (map)

General Mail (administrative, fundraising, events, media, education)
P.O. Box 24001 Market Square
Windsor, ON N8Y 4Y8
Canada

Research (migration monitoring, banding station)
585 South Shore Road
Pelee Island, ON N0R 1M0
Canada

Contact

We’re happy to share our expertise about birds, migration patterns, wildlife conservation and related topics.

Please contact us for interviews, to plan your visit, or with your questions.

General Mail
(administrative, fundraising, events, media, education)
P.O. Box 24001 Market Square
Windsor, ON N8Y 4Y8

Research
(migration monitoring, banding station)
585 South Shore Road
Pelee Island, ON N0R 1M0
(519) 724-2829

Our Photographers

Thank you to Paul Jones, Mike V.A. Burrell, Richard K. Cooper, Sumiko Onishi, and all the talented and persistent bird photographers who generously shared their images with PIBO to enhance your enjoyment of this website.

Newsletter

peleebird

PIBO is a non-profit charity devoted to the study and conservation of birds.

Dear friends of PIBO, We hope you are having a lov

Dear friends of PIBO,
We hope you are having a lovely holiday season. Here are just some of the highlights from 2022. We hope you enjoy our Year in Review!
For the Birds,
From the Staff of Pelee Island Bird Observatory

PIBO t shirts and Bird Friendly Windsor shirts ava

PIBO t shirts and Bird Friendly Windsor shirts available for pickup in Windsor. Made in Canada and locally printed by @rareapparelwindsor .Stuff one in a bird lover’s stocking! $35 each
#birdingapparel
# birdfriendlywindsor
#windsorbirders
#birdersofessexcounty

Thank you to everyone who donated and shared our #

Thank you to everyone who donated and shared our #givingtuesdayca campaign this year. Through the generosity of 45 individuals and our matching donor we raised over $17,000 for our migration monitoring and education programs! #thankyouthursday

#givingtuesdayca is happening now! Just one day a

#givingtuesdayca is happening now! Just one day a year PIBO pulls out all the stops with our fundraising campaign. This year we are so lucky to have @therealmargaretatwood matching all donations up to $25,000! To donate to our campaign for migration monitoring and education and outreach see the link in our bio. Thank you!!!🦉💕

#GivingTuesdayCA is almost here. All donations to

#GivingTuesdayCA is almost here. All donations to PIBO before midnight tomorrow will be doubled! Your gift for the birds will have twice the impact! Give $50 and PIBO will get $100 for our migration monitoring programs. Give $100 and PIBO will get $200 for our Bird Friendly Windsor program!
#PIBO
#peleeisland
#birdfriendlycities

#givingtuesdayca is only one week away! Please con

#givingtuesdayca is only one week away! Please consider donating to PIBO this charitable season!

Writing contest alert! Do you have a great story t

Writing contest alert! Do you have a great story to share about your bird watching experiences? Long time birder, COVID birder, birder at your feeder? Have a favourite bird and would like to tell us why? Or do you have a special place that you visit for bird watching or nature appreciation? Whatever it is, we would love to read it! Tell us in 250 words or less and have a chance at winning some great bird- themed prizes. Our very own Graeme Gibson, the younger, will select the winning entries. Categories for adults and children under 16. Please send your stories ( entitled Pibo nature writing contest in the subject line) to info@pibo.ca. Or send them via homing pigeon to 585 South Shore Rd, Pelee Island ON N0R 1 M0. The contest closes on Dec 21 for email entries and Dec 28th for mail submissions.
#naturewritingcontest
#storycontest
#birdwriting
#PIBO
#birdfriendlycities

It’s only 2 weeks until #givingtuesdayca! Togeth

It’s only 2 weeks until #givingtuesdayca! Together we help. Save the date November 29th.

Young male Common Yellowthroat. Photo by Sumiko On

Young male Common Yellowthroat. Photo by Sumiko Onishi.

Amelia Rudolph Laskey 1885-1973 Born in Indiana,

Amelia Rudolph Laskey 1885-1973

Born in Indiana, Amelia R. Laskey had a passion of gardening. Once she moved with her husband to Tennessee, she started her natural and wild garden which would attract an abundant amount of wildlife. She joined her “Bird Club” in which she started her journey of observational skills. She was able to attract mockingbirds and she raised one of them for 15 years. Her specimen which she called “Honey Child” was more of a pet, but she let him develop as wild as he could despite his health conditions. She published hundreds of papers on life histories of birds.

She was recognized by her work by The Fish and Wildlife Service which granted Amelia a bander's permit in 1931. She went on to observe cowbirds behaviour specially the courtship this species portrays. In her studies, a sort of “sexual jealousy” behaviour was noted when “toppling-forward bows" and "peck-gestures” were performed by both males and females. She studied the Tennessee Blue Jays’ migrations, nesting habits, behavior, and age records; and in her last paper she gave a brief account of her experience with albinism in Blue Jays. In 1943, a recovery of a killed chimney Swift bird was recovered in Peru. This bird had been banded previously in the United-States by Mrs. Laskey. That bird along side 12 other birds were identified to the Fish and Wildlife Services to pinpoint down it’s origins.

Her passion for birds took a turn when she joined a moon watching club and observed bird shadows flying in the night. As she was tracking their migratory path, bird casualties were happening alongside airports and television towers. She worked on collecting data and compared the weather conditions that would optimize bird collisions and fatalities. In the airport scenario, birds were crashing to the ground after being disturbed by the ceilometers devices used. Inserting filters over ceilometer lights on nights would thereby eliminating the lights' disastrous effect on migrating birds. She did this work for over 20 years which was a first in Bird Safety in Airports across the United-States.

#peleeislandbirdobservatory #womeninornithology #birdsafety

While our team continues to collect data in the do

While our team continues to collect data in the downtown area of Windsor for bird collisions, check this out !

A great example of incorporating bird collision solutions and our everyday lives!

The new fitness centre, the Toldo Lancer Centre of the University of Windsor, installed bird-friendly glass on all of it’s outer windows!

Pay attention to the 2inch dot pattern as well as the cool design on the sides. These are perfect ways to keep bird collisions to a minimum.

#birdfriendly #birdcollisionprevention #birdcollisionsolutions #birdfriendlycity #windsor #universityofwindsor #toldolancercentre

Margaret Morse Nice (1883‒1974) Born in Massac

Margaret Morse Nice (1883‒1974)

Born in Massachusetts, she had a curiosity of why things are the way they are that pushed her into her passion. Studying child psychology and zoology at the Clark University, she was able to merge both fields when she moved to Ohio. Having a 60-acre backyard, she was able to observe for 8 years the behaviours and territorial mechanisms the song sparrows would perform. A new technique was being used to conduct research in ornithology called banding and she happily applied this throughout her research. The use of color bands on birds’ feet that we use today, helped her identify different clans and generations of song sparrows in order to divide them into sections of the field of study. This meticulous observational work gave birth to a new branch of science called ethology.

Her life-long study of 50 years of the territorial behaviours of song-sparrows awarded her the American Ornithologists’ Union’s Brewster Medal in 1943. Not only did she publish 250 publications on birds in scientific journals, multiple volumes, but she was also the first women to become president of the Wilson Ornithological Society (1937-1939). An award was also named after her by that same society years later to commemorate the extraordinaire work she accomplished in her lifetime.

“The Wilson Ornithological Society is pleased to establish the Margaret Morse Nice Medal in recognition of her scientific creativity and insight, her concern for the education of young and amateur ornithologists, and her leadership as an innovator and mentor.” (Burtt Jr., 1998).

Burtt, E. H. (1998). Wilson Ornithological Society establishes Margaret Morse Nice medal. sora.unm.edu. Retrieved June 28, 2022, from https://sora.unm.edu/sites/default/files/journals/wilson/v110n01/p0025-p0027.pdf

https://columbusaudubon.org/about-us/margaret-more-nice/
https://naturemuseum.org/2021/03/margaret-morse-nice/

#birds #ornithology #birdsofinstagram #womeninornithology #pibo #songsparrows #margaretmorsenice #birdbanding #extraordinarywomen #ethology

Emilie Snethlague 1868-1929 Born in Germany in an

Emilie Snethlague 1868-1929

Born in Germany in an era where women had very little to almost no accessibility to school, she gained her doctorate in Natural History. She then moved to Brazil and became a curator for the bird collection in the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi in Belem. A fiery woman that lead multiple expedition in the different states of Brazil in order to build an Amazonian bird collection. Her “Catàlogo das aves amazônicas” became the largest amazonian bird collection. She was also the first woman to become the director of a scientific institution in South America. She is remembered today for her personality, her work and perseverance. In one of the expeditions she amputated one of her own finger after a terrible infection had surged from a piranha bite. To commemorate an incredible figure in ornithology, the Museum of Natural Sciences named an expedition after her. This expedition was made to sample the one river Emilie Snethlague could not do : the Jurua River. In honor of Dr. Snethlague, the expedition will be lead and done exclusively by women.

https://glauciaornito.wixsite.com/snethlageexpedition

https://sciendo.com/abstract/journals/host/10/1/article-p71.xml

#ornithology #emiliesnethlague #bird #womeninornithology #brazil #birds #science

Bird-friendly windows don’t have to be boring! T

Bird-friendly windows don’t have to be boring! These windows downtown feature drawings that help break up the reflective windows, making them less of a threat for birds

Tall glass buildings like these can be a hotspot f

Tall glass buildings like these can be a hotspot for bird window collisions. Facing the Detroit river, birds mistake the reflection for an open sky and water. Only a few feet away from another bird, our team found another collision victim this week.

Our first woman in Ornithology is : Eleanor D’Ar

Our first woman in Ornithology is : Eleanor D’Arborea

Born a Sardinian noblewoman and later became Ruler of Sardinia, Italy in 1383. As a ruler, she proved her war strategy useful to defeat the Aragon invasion. She created the Carta de Logu in 1395 which is a charter of rights. This was the first of it’s kind including the protection of women’s right as well as giving women the right of inheritance and property rights in Sardinia. This chart was implemented until 1827 when the document was replaced by the Holy Roman Emperor rules. We can suggest that she was the first ornithologist to legislate protective rules on a bird species; the falcons. In 1392, a law was commissioned which protected bird’s nest from illegal hunters. In the 19th Century, a falcon was named after the Ruler as Eleanora’s Falcon.

https://xeno-canto.org/species/Falco-eleonorae

https://birdfact.com/birds/eleonoras-falcon#distribution

https://badassladiesofhistory.wordpress.com/2014/08/14/eleanor-of-arborea/

#birdsofinstagram #birds #falcons #peleeislandbirdobservatory #womensupportingwomen #ornithology #womeninhistory

Here’s Dante, our education and outreach coordin

Here’s Dante, our education and outreach coordinator with a short reel on how to install the @featherfriendly window collision tape. We still have over 150 kits for local businesses! You can email us at education@pibo.com for more details, otherwise check out flap.org for resources on preventing window collisions

Ornithology you say ? 🕊While our team accesses

Ornithology you say ? 🕊While our team accesses more bird collisions in the Windsor Area, discover weekly posts of different women who have pioneered in the field of ornithology. Learn how these women across the globe have contributed to this field and much more. Stay tuned for more post in the upcoming weeks!

#peleeislandbirdobservatory #ornithology #birdsofwindsor #bird #birdsafebuildings #wildlife

As we expected, our team’s monitoring efforts ha

As we expected, our team’s monitoring efforts have shown us that downtown Windsor’s tall glass buildings can be hotspots for bird collisions! We will be collecting data using the Global Bird Collision Mapper - a web app for reporting bird collisions around the world. We encourage you all to report bird window strikes to contribute to our understanding of this problem. RIP to this little robin :(

The month of June is devoted to The Great Canadian

The month of June is devoted to The Great Canadian Giving Challenge. For every $3 donated to PIBO, we receive one ballot.
#GivingChallengeCA

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Recent Posts

PIBO Garden Party a Huge Success

PIBO Garden Party a Huge Success

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October 31, 2022

PIBO Launches Changemakers Birding Club

PIBO Launches Changemakers Birding Club

August 10, 2022

Windsor Named a Bird Friendly City

Windsor Named a Bird Friendly City

Home
About PIBO
Research
Outreach
Volunteer
Events
News
Email Newsletter
Shop
Contact PIBO

Home
About PIBO
Research
Outreach
Volunteer
Events
News
Email Newsletter
Shop
Contact PIBO