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Talks
The following are talks, perhaps more aptly named presentations or even performances, are available to be booked for your group or club. These talks are appropriate for an adult audience and have been presented to many local community groups, clubs, and retirement residences. If outside of the lower Vancouver Island municipalities of Sidney, greater Victoria, Colwood or Langford, travel expenses will be required.
Love Among the Feathers
Birds rely on a beautiful visual language of colour and display to defeat their rivals and impress their mates. During the winter months in Victoria the waterfowl are busy choosing their mates for the following spring breeding season. The displays are not static but are movements carefully choreographed to respond to and coordinate with those of their mates and rivals. Slow motion video helps to reveal the complex syntax of postures which are the bird's language of love.
Please email me to book a date:
The Joy of Birdsong
To listen to a bird's song is to be more perfectly alive! Celebrate the song of birds with ornithologist James Clowater as he presents an audio-visual exploration of birdsong. Learn the secrets of why and how birds sing and how to identify some of our local birds by their songs.
Please email me to book a date:
Diving Birds Revealed
Diving birds have adapted to forage in an underwater environment that is often dark, dangerous, and demanding. The challenges presented by the sea and the adaptive solutions found in diving birds are the topic of this PowerPoint and video presentation by local ornithologist James Clowater. The specific adaptations in cormorants, loons, grebes, and other diving birds will be presented for your enjoyment.
Please email me to book a date:
Convergence of Myth, Morphology, and Behaviour
The amazing abilities of diving birds have long been the source of wonder and mystery. What could not explained often became the source of legend. The loon was the Spirit Guide, the Bringer of Rain, and the Giver of Sight. In British Columbia, a family of birds fly underwater and dive to great depths, and the mysterious Western Grebe hunts through the darkness of night using bioluminescence to capture fish.
Please email me to book a date: