I am the Collections Curator of the Cowan Tetrapod Collection at the University of British Columbia Beaty Biodiversity Museum (Canada). As an advocate of the importance of natural history collections, I developed web-based teaching resources on avian specimen preparation methods which are used internationally in the curriculum of many universities and museums. These web resources come in two platforms: ~800 PowerPoint slides divided into 18 presentations and 5.5 hours of demonstration footage divided into 11 videos.
My research interests are all over the map and literally depend on which way the wind is blowing. I am extremely interested in vagrants or other rare bird mortalities found in British Columbia, not only to preserve these errant birds as skins but also to deposit tissue samples into the UBC Avian Tissue Collection. Burying unusual specimens in museum cabinets is not useful. It is essential to publish notes in journals about vagrants, as well as making the existence of these specimens and their tissues known via multi-museum search engines. Assisting UBC graduate students often leads to unexpected avenues in my own avian research. Participating in necropsy sessions with government researchers on either species-at-risk or avian mortality events due to extreme weather equally lead me in unpredictable research directions.
As a SWFS-certified Avian Forensic Morphologist, I enjoy solving puzzles. Identifying avian elements has several applications. Ethno-ornithology and airstrikes are my favourites:
Ethno-ornithology: Identifying avian elements in artefacts commonly enriches the cultural context of that object. Forensic methods are successfully used to pinpoint the geographic region of a culturally orphaned object. Reattributing an object to its rightful culture can shed new light or strengthen existing knowledge.
Airport Safety and Wildlife Management: Birds collide with airplanes and are commonly ingested by jet engines. Identifying airstrike samples using feather-down microstructure analysis and/or utilizing feather-to-feather comparisons in find a get ‘a match’ is very CSI and something I love doing. To date, I have identified airstrike samples originating for four airports and one air-force base.