Speaker: Sahas Barve

We will plunge into the complicated social lives of acorn woodpeckers. How they build granaries and what they will do to win access to a big granary. Using cutting-edge radio tracking technology and over 45 years of demographic data, we will learn how these common backyard birds cooperate with close relatives to raise offspring and eavesdrop on neighbors to gain social information. Finally we will look briefly at how fire may be affecting the socio-biology of this enigmatic bird of the Californian oak savannah.

Bio: Sahas Barve is from Mumbai, India and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. He is an avian ecologist, interested in understanding why some birds are social and what is the evolutionary benefit of social behavior to these birds. He is an avid birder and wants to see 6,000 species by the time he is 60.