Speaker: Matthew Young

Birders have been fortunate and delighted to observe some winter finches in recent years, and some will be seen this year too, but you likely will have to go searching for them this year where last year some came right to us (Evening Grosbeaks and Purple Finches). They are colorful visitors from the North which brighten any winters day. In this program, “From Finches to the FiRN and the Grosbeak Recovery Project,” we will talk about finch irruptions and superflights, the decline of the Evening Grosbeak, and get into to the distribution and ecology of different Red Crossbill and Evening Grosbeak flight calls.”

Matthew Young, President and Founder of the Finch Research Network, will talk about these interesting and beautiful winter finches and what led to the formation of the Finch Research Network (FiRN), and what FiRN plans to accomplish into the future to help them. Some of this will be covered from the book Matt wrote, Finches of the United States and Canada with co-author Lillian Stokes.

Matthew Young is a co-lead on the Evening Grosbeak Road to Recovery Project in addition to being the Founder and Board President of the Finch Research Network.  Matthew worked in the field of social work with special needs populations at the William George Agency for 12+ years and is currently a Wild Bird Products Specialist and Conservation Coordinator for Aspen Song Wild Bird Food. Additionally, Matthew worked at the Cornell Lab across 15 years where he worked on Golden-winged Warblers, Voices of Hawaii’s Birds, Merlin Bird ID, and was Project Lead on Lab’s first Irruptive Finch Survey in 1999. Co-author on Stokes Guide to Finches of the United States and Canada, Matt is widely known as a preeminent authority on finches of North America who has written finch species accounts for breeding bird atlases, Birds of the World accounts, and published several papers on finches and the Red Crossbill vocal complex.