HMANA Lunch & Learn Series: American Bird Banding Lab; 100 Years of Bird Banding
Wednesday, March 28 at 12:00 pm EST
We welcomed Antonio (Tony) Celis, Chief of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Bird Banding Lab (BBL) for the Hawk Migration Association’s (HMA’s) March Lunch & Learn. Antonio’s talk provides an overview of the Bird Banding Lab program, including its history, current initiatives, and future vision. He discussed the lab’s mission, methods, key successes, and what lies ahead for the BBL.
Tony collaborates with the BBL team and partners to maintain the lab as the premier resource for long-term bird banding and marking data in North America. His vision is to enhance the BBL as an integrated scientific resource that quickly adapts to emerging research needs, study methods, and technologies to support effective bird management and conservation science. Tony earned his B.S. in Biology from the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos in Mexico (2002), followed by a Master’s in Integrative Biology (2008) and a Ph.D. in Natural Resources and Environmental Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2015).
He later held a postdoctoral research position at the Illinois Natural History Survey (2017). His research focuses on various aspects of avian ecology and behavior, with an overarching goal of improving conservation efforts. His work includes studies on bird migration and stopover ecology, population dynamics of species of concern, and bioacoustics.
