Home Program Workshops & Training Opportunities

Workshops & Training Opportunities

The workshops and training sessions at AOS 2026 offer opportunities both for hands-on learning exercises, where participants engage in a mix of lectures and activities, and for panel discussions on a wide range of timely topics highlighting exciting advances in ornithological research, management, field safety, education, and conservation.

All workshops are scheduled for Monday, 3 August 2026.

If you have any questions, please email meeting@americanornithology.org.

Workshop Fees

Fees for workshops are separate from annual meeting registration. Register for workshops when you register for AOS 2026.

  • Half-day workshops: $20
  • Full-day workshops: $40

If a workshop is full, “Sold Out” will be displayed next to the button for registration. Sold-out workshops will have a link to sign up for a waiting list.

Adding Events After Registering

If you would like to add an event to your registration after you’ve already registered for the meeting, please follow these instructions.

Click links below to jump to workshop descriptions.

Eastern Working Group of Partners in Flight — Science-based Bird Conservation Through Cooperative Partnerships

Monday, 3 August

9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. ET

Maximum Number of Participants: 100

Instructors: Eastern Working Group Leadership Team – Randy Dettmers, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Pamela Hunt, New Hampshire Audubon; Becky Stewart, Canadian Wildlife Service; Becky Keller, Appalachian Mountains Joint Venture; Jim Giocomo, American Bird Conservancy; Scott Anderson, North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission

Target Audience: Ornithologists at any stage in their career with interests in coordinated and collaborative implementation of research, monitoring, and management activities supporting bird conservation in eastern North America.

This workshop will be a series of work sessions for the Eastern Working Group of Partners in Flight (Eastern PIF). It will be a forum for continuing work on Eastern PIF projects while also providing an opportunity for new participants to learn how Partners in Flight operates to further landbird conservation in the Western Hemisphere and discover opportunities to contribute to these efforts. Three main topics will be addressed in the work sessions. First is an opportunity to move forward a Grassland Bird Conservation Business Plan for the Northeastern US. This Plan has been in development for over a year and by the time of the meeting will be at a stage where input will be sought from outside experts and conservation practitioners. Second, full annual cycle conservation will be addressed through work on migratory stopover conservation and implementing Conservation Investment Strategies for wintering grounds habitat. Finally, there will be a session on local and national efforts to reduce bird collision mortality with buildings and towers including information for how to get involved and material for getting started. An overview of Partners in Flight and brief updates on the group’s overall activities will be provided at the beginning of the workshop. Anyone interested in these topics is encouraged to participate and add their perspective and expertise to these Eastern PIF projects.

Registration instructions for this working group:

  • For those ALSO attending the AOS 2026 meeting: you will have the option to register for the Eastern PIF workshop when completing your registration for the AOS 2026 meeting.
  • For those ONLY attending the Eastern PIF workshop: please register for the workshop using the standalone Eastern PIF workshop registration form on the AOS Member Portal. Please note that you will need to create a free account on the Portal if you do not already have one.

Birding for Wellbeing

Monday, 3 August

7:30 a.m.–9:30 a.m. ET

Maximum Number of Participants: 20

Instructor: Ami Jean Aubin, Adventure East

Target Audience: Science-minded nature enthusiasts who think deeply and want to feel deeply, too

A mindful field practice for people who think deeply and want to feel deeply, too.

Birding for Wellbeing offers a grounded, evidence-supported experience for science-minded nature enthusiasts to step out of analysis mode and into a more embodied, heart-centered relationship with the natural world. By pairing mindful awareness with the observation of wild birds, this program helps participants shift from cognitive processing to direct sensory experience.

Birds make this transition surprisingly accessible. Their colors, behaviors, and songs naturally draw attention into the present moment, interrupting mental loops and inviting curiosity without effort. In this practice, the birds themselves become the anchor—an alternative to the breath—guiding participants toward slower pacing, fuller perception, and a more reciprocal way of noticing.

Mindful Birding is not about identification, checklists, or outcomes. It’s about tuning your nervous system to the landscape, letting your senses lead, and allowing wonder to arise without needing to categorize it. Research shows that time in biodiverse green spaces can lower cortisol, support immune and cardiac health, and improve mood and attention. Mindful engagement with birdsong and movement amplifies these benefits, helping quiet the mind while opening space for emotional clarity and connection.

For those who spend much of their time thinking about ecosystems, this practice offers a chance to feel them—to experience the living world not only as a subject of study, but as a source of grounding, restoration, and belonging. Shared in community, it strengthens both personal wellbeing and collective care for the places we love.

Telemetry Data — Beyond the Location

Monday, 3 August

8:00 a.m.–9:30 a.m. ET

Maximum Number of Participants: 30

Instructor: Mike A. van den Tillaart, Lotek Wireless

Target Audience: Target audience is researchers who have location data or will soon do so and want to know more about that data, error estimates, and associated variables. Also those interested in looking for a better understanding in regards to additional sensors that are sometimes included with location devices.

The objectives are to better understand telemetry location data, associated variables and additional sensor data. This will be accomplished via:

  1. Explaining calculations (generally, not mathematically) involved in obtaining locations.
  2. Discussing factors that affect location accuracy.
  3. Explaining meaning of numerical qualifiers of location.  e.g. DOP (Dilution Of Precision).
  4. Discussing additional sensor data that are sometimes provided with location.  

All information presented via PowerPoint.

Setting Your Analyses Up For Success With eBird Data: Preparing Raw Data With ‘Auk’ in R

Monday, 3 August

8:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. ET

Maximum Number of Participants: 15

Instructors: Aimee Van Tatenhove, Cornell Lab of Ornithology; Fabiola Rodríguez Vásquez, Cornell University

Target Audience: Researchers with interest in using eBird data for research and visualization, but who have no to minimal prior experience using eBird data or the auk R package. This workshop is fitting for a broad audience, from graduate students to research associates. The auk package facilitates the processing of eBird data for research applications commonly used across the ornithological conservation and research community, such as analyzing bird occurrences at particular locations and generating spatial visualizations of species occurrence patterns. Participants must feel comfortable working with R syntax and know how to navigate a package’s help files, and understand how these explain arguments. Familiarity or working knowledge of the tidyverse packages is recommended.

eBird is the world’s largest participatory avian science project, and eBird data have been used in thousands of research projects globally. However, data from participatory science projects like eBird require special preparation to be usable in robust statistical analyses. This workshop will teach participants how to download and prepare eBird data for visualization and analysis in various exploratory or modeling frameworks. We will start with a brief overview presentation to orient participants to eBird data and its uses, and to the steps needed to download a dataset. We will follow this presentation with the introduction of the pre-downloaded datasets to be used during the workshop and continue with instructor-led, hands-on coding exercises exploring how to import, filter, and otherwise prepare eBird data for use in plots, maps, and statistical models. Given the brevity of the workshop, we will focus on data manipulation only—however, we will provide resources for participants to explore on their own time that demonstrate how to use the formatted data produced during this workshop in statistical frameworks, including occupancy and abundance models. After completing this workshop, participants should be able to prepare eBird data for visualization, exploration and analysis, and know where to find further resources for using eBird data in their own research projects.

User-Friendly Tools for Conservation: Automated No-Code Analyses of Animal Tracking Data Using Movebank and MoveApps

Monday, 3 August

8:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. ET

Maximum Number of Participants: 25

Instructor: Ashley Lohr, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences / Movebank

Target Audience: Ornithologists looking for an efficient, user-friendly way to manage and analyze animal tracking data to achieve research objectives or conservation and management goals (e.g., state/federal agency wildlife managers, non-profit biologists, graduate students, etc.).

Analytical techniques for animal movement data are developing at a rapid pace. Many biologists lack the time and expertise needed to leverage popular programming languages and stay up-to-date with new software developments. Such barriers to data analysis and interpretation hinder the conservation decision-making process, at a detriment to at-risk species and populations. To address these barriers we built MoveApps (moveapps.org), a user-friendly no-code analysis platform for animal tracking data. The platform is a free, web-based service, bypassing the need for users to download and install software while ensuring available analysis tools are accessible to a global audience. MoveApps is designed to analyze public or private animal tracking data stored in Movebank (a free, global repository for bio-logging data), which are harmonized to a shared data model and set of attributes.

Past outreach efforts indicated that a substantial number of North American wildlife managers support a user-friendly platform such as MoveApps and acknowledge its potential to make data analysis more efficient, generate internal reports, more easily share results and visualizations with partners and funders, and encourage managers to store data in one place (i.e., Movebank) rather than on local hard drives spread throughout a region. Since releasing MoveApps in February 2021, more than 1,900 people from 50+ countries have registered for an account. There are currently over 130 analysis tools available on the website contributed by both our development team and the greater movement ecology community.

Due to the growing number of avian telemetry projects being conducted in North America, we once again want to provide the opportunity for interested AOS conference participants to learn how to apply MoveApps to their own data. Workshop participants will receive a slideshow introduction to Movebank/MoveApps plus a live workflow demonstration before transitioning to a guided hands-on working session during which instruction and troubleshooting will be provided. We will explore methods for data filtering/transformation, visualization, home range estimation, behavioral assessments, and environmental integration via two case studies using publicly-available datasets stored on Movebank. Supplementary materials will be provided so participants can work at their own pace. The workshop will be limited to 25 registrants to ensure participants receive sufficient assistance from the instructor.

Introduction to Conservation Standards for the Practice of Conservation (and for Writing Better Grants!)

Monday, 3 August

8:30 a.m.–5:30 a.m. ET

Maximum Number of Participants: 20

Instructor: Jim Goetz, Vermont Center for Ecostudies

Target Audience: People who are interested in learning to plan and implement adaptive conservation projects.

This workshop will introduce participants to the Conservation Standards, a widely-adopted suite of proven principles and flexible practices that helps conservation practitioners to improve how they plan, manage, monitor and adapt and fund their conservation projects.

In hands-on group exercises based on a practical case study (or participants’ own cases), participants will learn to construct a situation model and a theory of change, two key Conservation Standards practices. Situation models help practitioners and relevant actors to gain a common understanding of the conservation situation. Carefully constructed theories of change help practitioners to better communicate (within their conservation teams and to others), their assumptions about how the strategies they develop will actually achieve the desired conservation impact in the real world. 

The workshop will also provide experience identifying effective strategies, and developing objectives and indicators to better measure strategy effectiveness and conservation impact. Additionally, participants will learn about related planning, evaluation and learning resources, and connecting with the Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP) and the Conservation Coaches Network (CCNet).

Agenda:

  • Opening and introductions
  • Overview of workshop agenda
  • Introduction to the Conservation Standards
  • Situation model overview and working session
  • Theory of change introduction, and working session
  • SMART objectives and indicators introduction and working session
  • Closing the adaptive management loop, reflecting on and adapting projects, and additional resources
  • Writing better grant proposals with Conservation Standards

Data to Design: Scientific graphics in R and Adobe Illustrator/Graphite

Monday, 3 August

8:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. ET

Maximum Number of Participants: 40

Instructors: Jenna M. McCullough, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County & UCLA; Devon A. DeRaad, UCLA; Emily V. Griffith, Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University

Target Audience: The morning session is targeted for participants with little to no experience with R and Rstudio, such as undergraduate to early stage PhD students. The afternoon session would be of interest to all levels of attendees who are interested in improving their scientific graphics, from undergraduates to professors.

Effective scientific graphics are essential for clearly communicating results, highlighting key patterns, and increasing the impact and accessibility of research. Well-designed graphics strengthen manuscripts and grant proposals, enhance conference presentations, and help communicate research findings to broader and more diverse audiences. 

This workshop is structured as a modular, two-part training that introduces participants to data visualization in R during the morning session and figure refinement using vector-based graphical software in the afternoon. Because the morning and afternoon sessions target different audiences and may attract different levels of interest, we prefer separate registration for each session to ensure fair access and appropriate use of limited workshop capacity.

The morning session focuses on building foundational R skills for participants with little to no prior experience. Led by Devon, with support from Jenna and Emily, this session will cover installing and loading R packages, using R projects and Quarto documents, working with genetic data in R, and straightforward data visualization using ColorBrewer palettes and ggplot2, to export publication-ready PDF figures.

The afternoon session begins with an overview of principles for creating clear, engaging, and accessible scientific graphics. Topics include the basics of color theory and composition, strategies for improving accessibility and readability, and how to leverage open-source graphics and images. Following this overview, participants will split into two hands-on groups based on their preferred software: Adobe Illustrator, a subscription-based platform often available through institutional licenses (led by Jenna), and Graphite, a free and open-access vector-based editing software (led by Emily). These sessions will emphasize practical figure editing with vector-based tools and optional customization of participants’ own figures.

Participants will be expected to bring their own computers with the relevant software downloaded prior to the workshop (Rstudio for the morning and Illustrator OR graphite for the afternoon).

North American Ornithological Atlas Committee (NORAC) Workshop

Monday, 3 August

9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. ET

Maximum Number of Participants: 40

Instructors: Kaelyn Bumelis, Birds Canada; John P. Carpenter, North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission

Target Audience: Those considering, planning for, or currently conducting a bird atlas.

Bird atlases are large-scale, citizen science-based projects that provide critical insights into bird distribution and breeding patterns. Modern atlases generate massive, high-precision datasets and rely on large volunteer networks. Because of their scale, these projects come with steep learning curves in both data and volunteer management, which can hinder their development and long-term success. The AOS annual meeting provides the ideal venue for collaboration among the nearly 20 North American atlas initiatives currently underway across the U.S. and Canada. Our workshop will focus on three areas related to NORAC’s current sub-working groups’ efforts: 1) proper use of breeding codes, 2) data analysis, and 3) data archiving.  Participants will leave with actionable strategies to strengthen their projects. Current atlas organizers who attend will leave with a deeper understanding of how to enhance their projects, while newcomers will build a strong foundation from which to grow with a supportive network of peers.

A Passive Acoustic Monitoring How-To: From Deployment to Analysis

Monday, 3 August

10:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. ET

Maximum Number of Participants: 30

Instructors: Lauren M. Chronister, University of Pittsburgh; Cameron J. Fiss, University of Pittsburgh; Brooke D. Goodman, University of Pittsburgh

Target Audience: Academic or non-academic biologists at any career stage who would like a hands-on tutorial on the basics of how to do bird monitoring with passive acoustics.

Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) is becoming a common tool in bird monitoring thanks to the availability of autonomous recording units (ARUs) and pretrained sound identification models. This workshop will help participants learn how to incorporate PAM into their own research. It will be divided into two parts: first, we will cover proper use and deployment of ARUs. Second, we will walk through the use of software for processing audio data into a useful verified output. Each section will include a lecture, a Q&A/discussion session, and a hands-on tutorial. Demonstration ARUs will be provided for use during the workshop and all necessary software will be available for download before the workshop at no cost. (1) We will cover differences between ARU options including price, durability, and audio quality. We will discuss settings and how these impact the samples obtained. We will walk participants through choices in how to deploy ARUs for different goals, and how proper management of ARUs and data fits into this process. Along the way, we will provide useful pointers from our personal experiences managing deployments of thousands of ARUs over nearly the past decade. This section will end with a hands-on activity involving setting up an ARU and then using it to record audio playback. (2) We will describe common approaches to analyzing recorded audio data and how these choices may change with scale of the deployment. We will describe some common audio classifier choices for birds and how these classifiers can be accessed. Participants will learn about important considerations when using these classifiers such as confusion species, target sound types, and differences in performance when applying them to new datasets. This section will conclude with a hands-on activity where participants use an automated classifier to score the audio recordings they made earlier. They will then learn how to use software for performing manual verification of detections to ensure validity of their classifier outputs and produce detection histories as one might for an occupancy model. Participants should be prepared to bring a laptop and download free software and sample data which will be sent out via email following registration. Take-home resources will include a document with references for exploring later including more advanced topics related to PAM not covered in the workshop, transcriptions of each Q&A period, and a copy of our slides and notes.

Reproducibility Beyond the Code — Organizing Research Projects in R

Monday, 3 August

1:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m. ET

Maximum Number of Participants: 25

Instructor: Aaron Skinner, University of British Columbia

Target Audience: Undergrads involved in research, graduate students, or anyone who conducts data analysis and wants to improve reproducibility and transparency in their workflows. No prior experience with Git or R is required, but basic familiarity with research, data management, and data analysis is assumed.

Reproducibility is now a baseline expectation in scientific research, yet many students struggle not because of complex analyses, but because their projects lack clear structure, documentation, and organization. This workshop focuses on practical strategies for making research projects understandable, revisable, and reproducible, even months or years after they are first created.

The workshop is designed primarily for graduate students who already work in R but want their projects to be easier to navigate, debug, and share. Rather than emphasizing advanced programming or function writing, the training treats R scripts as scientific documents that should clearly communicate intent, workflow, and analytical decisions.

The first portion of the workshop will introduce core principles of reproducible research and focus on organizing R projects and repositories. Topics will include logical directory structures; separating raw data, processed data, scripts, and outputs; and organizing multiple scripts within a project. Participants will learn how to structure R scripts with clear introductions, stated goals or objectives, and internal organization that makes analyses readable and rerunnable.

The second portion will focus on documentation. Participants will learn how to write effective README files that explain project purpose, file structure, and analysis order, as well as how to create simple data dictionaries for tabular datasets. Emphasis will be placed on “lightweight” documentation that meaningfully improves transparency without creating unnecessary overhead.

The final portion of the workshop will introduce Git and GitHub as tools for version control and public archiving. Instruction will focus on practical use cases, including tracking changes over time, recovering earlier versions of scripts, safely refactoring or deleting code, and deciding which files should and should not be tracked using tools such as .gitignore. The role of GitHub repositories in meeting journal expectations for data and code availability will also be discussed.

The workshop will include hands-on components throughout, and participants are encouraged to bring their own active research projects. Time will be allocated for applying concepts directly to participants’ existing scripts and directory structures. By the end of the workshop, participants will have a clearer framework for organizing reproducible projects and the tools needed to maintain them through analysis, writing, and publication.

Modeling Bird Movement With eBird and BirdFlowR

Monday, 3 August

1:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m. ET

Maximum Number of Participants: 50

Instructors: Ethan Plunkett, University of Massachusetts; Yuting Deng, Cornell Lab of Ornithology; Yangkang Chen, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Dan Sheldon, University of Massachusetts; Benjamin Van Doren, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Target Audience: The target audience is scientists interested in using BirdFlow models to inform their research. Ideally, participants will have some experience with programming in R.

BirdFlow is a computational framework for modeling bird movement using eBird data. It generates synthetic movement routes and predicts past and future locations of individuals, enabling the study of population-level movement patterns without relying on individual tracking data. This workshop highlights recent advances in BirdFlow modeling and R software development, and provides a guided walkthrough of models and functions that participants can readily apply to their own research.

We will begin with a lecture-based introduction to BirdFlow focusing on recent advances and potential applications, followed by a high-level walkthrough of the BirdflowR package with follow-along examples. Participants will then have time to independently explore the species and models of interest with instructor support, followed by a Q&A/discussion session. After establishing familiarity with the core functionality, we will walk through three vignettes demonstrating how BirdFlow can be applied to different research questions.

The first vignette demonstrates how to use the software to analyze migration phenology of different populations within the same species. Participants will gain a better understanding of data types and tools in the BirdFlow software.

The second vignette demonstrates how to use BirdFlow models to quantify movement among polygon regions over specific time frames. This approach has been used to generate a wild bird movement predictor for use in epidemiological models.  

The third vignette demonstrates the application of BirdFlow models to study migratory connectivity questions, including describing connectivity patterns and quantifying connectivity strength. Participants will also see how BirdFlow can be integrated with other data sources (e.g., banding, Motus, and tracking data) to improve connectivity estimation. 

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to (1) understand the core mechanism and advantages of BirdFlow; (2) be familiar with the major functionality of BirdFlowR package and models; and (3) apply BirdFlow to their customized research questions.

Snow Field Measurements and Data Sources for Avian Research

Monday, 3 August

1:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m. ET

Maximum Number of Participants: 20

Instructor: Katherine B. Gura, Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere, Colorado State University

Target Audience: This workshop is designed for a wide audience, ranging from graduate students to researchers to managers, and no prior snow knowledge is required. The workshop is tailored to avian ecologists and managers with an interest in cold-season environments.

Snow is a primary feature of cold-season landscapes, and distributions of snow conditions, or “snowscapes,” can influence animal ecology in countless ways. Therefore, it is essential that researchers and managers quantify snow conditions in their efforts to understand the dynamic cold-season environments that regulate their study populations. We propose to lead a workshop that introduces avian professionals to snow-related field measurements and data sources that can help them better answer their wildlife-snow interaction questions. This workshop is designed for a wide audience, ranging from graduate students to researchers to managers, and no prior snow knowledge is required. At the end of this course, workshop participants will be able to use what they have learned to design and execute their own snow field sampling efforts in a way that is manageable and efficient, while fully considering their logistical constraints, funding, and specific science questions. We also will present a summary of operational snow data products over North America to aid ecologists in finding, understanding, selecting, and accessing appropriate snow data for their specific applications. Finally, we will highlight case studies of snow-specific research on avian species. Ultimately, workshop participants should be able to collect and/or apply more relevant, informative, and high-quality snow information. This will improve their study-system understanding and ideally help elevate the quality of their research.

The workshop will include information about snow properties (e.g., depth, strength, hardness, stratigraphy, and wind and rain crusts) germane to different objectives; basic snow mechanical properties; common measurement techniques and the tools used to make such measurements; and guidance on winter field equipment, clothing, and safety. We will cover topics including sampling design and decision-making for different types of wildlife science questions and varying project resources, as well as hands-on experience with snow measurement tools. Finally, we will provide a comprehensive discussion of how to combine field measurements with modeling tools and other snow datasets to better understand snow distributions and properties as they evolve across space and time. The details of this discussion will be tailored to the specific interests and needs of the participants and their individual research and management questions.

Social Field Safety for Inclusive Fieldwork: An Open Workshop

Monday, 3 August

9:00 a.m.–11:00 a.m. ET

Maximum Number of Participants: 40

Instructors: Murry L. Burgess, Ph.D., Mississippi State University; Lauren D. Pharr, Ph.D., North Carolina State University

Target Audience: Students and PI’s of academic entities, anyone associated with government, NGO, or other organizations engaged in natural science and professional fieldwork.

Outdoor experiences and fieldwork are not the same for everyone. Individuals who work outdoors as part of research, education, or professional roles may face social risks, including conflict or scrutiny based on perceived identity. These risks are disproportionately experienced by people from historically marginalized or excluded groups.

This open workshop, led by representatives of Field Inclusive (FI), is designed for anyone involved in fieldwork or outdoor professional activities. The session will introduce the concept of social field safety—interactions with the public or others encountered during fieldwork—through brief historical context, interactive group activities, and discussion. Participants will work through real-world scenarios and leave with practical strategies that institutions and organizations can use to support safer, more inclusive field environments.

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