SDFO Meeting this coming WEDNESDAY Feb 20

Greetings all!

Our next meeting will be held on Wednesday, February 20, at 6:00 p.m., in the Hoffman Room of the San Diego Foundation Building, 2508 Historic Decatur Rd. Going south on Rosecrans St. in the Midway area of town, turn left on Roosevelt Rd. into Liberty Station and proceed a couple of blocks to Decatur. Parking is available on the street or in the adjacent parking lots. Note the changed date! (We weren’t able to secure our normal Tuesday date.) 

We have several awesome programs scheduled. If you haven't already done so, please bring or mail your check for your 2019 dues. Single memberships cost $25, and family $35. Please include your email address if you updated it. Click here for SDFO membership instructions.  

Program: We have two short programs this month. First, Christopher Adler will present “Twelve Days in Borneo.” Christopher presents an overview of a recent guided birding trip to Sabah state, Malaysia, at the northern end of the island of Borneo. The island is a prize birding destination for a large number of endemic species, owing in part to Mt. Kinabalu, one of the highest mountains in Southeast Asia, and for a mix of Sundaic and mainland Indochinese species, and even a few Philippine species. With photos and audio recordings from the trip, Christopher's presentation will include a wide variety of spectacular tropical species such as broadbills, hornbills and spiderhunters, as well as endemic mammals encountered such as elephants and primates. 

Following, Nick Vinciguerra will present a talk entitled “Secondary contact between coastal and interior scrub-jays (Aphelocoma californica and A. woodhouseii) in western Nevada revisited with genomic markers.” The scrub-jays of the genus Aphelocoma have long fascinated ornithologists because of their geographic variation in phenotype and ecology. The California Scrub-Jay (A. californica) and Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jay (A. woodhouseii) come into secondary contact and hybridize across a narrow swath of continuous pinyon-juniper woodland in the mountains of western Nevada. In this talk, Nick will describe how genomic markers show a relationship between ecomorphological traits (bill and wing length) and genetic affinity of hybrids that was not found with the markers used in the previous study, suggesting an evolutionary basis for these traits. 

Next month’s meeting will be held on Tuesday, March 19, going back to our usual time and place. 

Nancy Christensen

Ramona