Bird of a feather flock together

This past weekend, I was lucky to take part in a symposium honouring my good colleague, Russell Greenberg. The Greenberg Innovation Sessions were organized by Ray Danner and Julie Danner (my friends!) and members of the Smithsonian Institute. I was lucky enough to visit and meet all these folks during this trip. The pictures are attached just to give a shout out to the birds.

It was fun to meet and hang out with ornithologists. We go to tour banding stations and see an eco-restoration project taking place on the largest "farm" in Maryland.

We heard original talks and hypotheses ranging from dispersal mechanisms, sexual selection, conservation biology, to ecophysiology. All by people who have worked with or been inspired by Russ. In short, it was a blast. I used to think I was fairly integrative in the approach I take, but sitting through over 20 talks on ecology and evolutionary biology of birds has made me re-calibrate that opinion. Anyhow, I learned that we should never fear to come up with a hypothesis and finding a way to test it. Also, this conference was accompanied by social media by Ray Danner, so here is my hashtag to the sessions: #rgis13