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Workshops & Training Opportunities

The workshops and training sessions at AOS 2025 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, 11 August 2025. Details will be available soon on workshop facilitators, fees, details, and times.

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

Click links below to jump to workshop descriptions.

What Do I Need to Know About Birds? Designing and Delivering engaging public programs

Instructor: Jacob P. Reiter, Pace University’s Dyson College Nature Center

Time: 1300–1500

Location: Grand C

Target Audience: Any and all ornithologists looking to delve into the world of environmental education as it relates to birds

Participating in boots-on-the-ground field work is essential for avian conservation. Collecting and interpreting data helps move the field of conservation biology forward. But how do you get the public to care about birds? How do you engage them in the work that you are doing? This workshop will analyze the different ways of interfacing with the public to communicate the importance of birds and their life histories, as well as practice the necessary skills to do so. Designing a public education program is a key skill for every working ornithologist, wildlife biologist, land manager, and environmental educator to have under their belts. The difficulty comes in tailoring your programs to the targeted audience. Communicating the high level of scientific research on avian ecology isn’t always easy to do, but being able to translate knowledge between scientists and the general public is a crucial part of environmental based communication. Delivering programs is more than just knowledge of the facts, it is the ability to adapt to the needs of your audience. Making people relate to the issues of birds and their importance is the best way to ensure that they leave your program with valuable information. Not only do you want program guests to leave with information, but you also want them to leave with a desire to help bird conservation efforts in their area, and care about what happens to birds around them. It is easy to get people to care about the charismatic megafauna of the world, but making them excited to hear about a Wilson’s Phalarope or Blue-grey Gnatcatcher is a different story.

Workshop will start with a presentation about the above topics, followed by a session in which participants will create a short public program to present to others based on presentation information.

Social Field Safety: Understanding and Addressing Risks to Marginalized Individuals Working Outdoors

Instructors: Murry L. Burgess, Ph.D., Mississippi State University; Lauren D. Pharr, M.S., North Carolina State University; Kayla A. Stukes, M.S., North Carolina State University

Time: 0900–1100

Location: Grand F

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

When it comes to the outdoors, not everyone’s experiences are equal. Individuals conducting fieldwork as a part of their job or research program often experience heightened risk of conflict due to identity-based prejudice. marginalized groups – including those defined by race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity and/or religion –are disproportionately affected by harassment or discrimination in field settings. Social field safety is the prevention, protocols, and resources concerned with protecting fieldworkers from discrimination, prejudice, and mentally or physically unsafe encounters with other people while performing fieldwork. This workshop, led by representatives of Field Inclusive (FI), a nonprofit dedicated to promoting social field safety, will address these challenges at both individual and institutional levels.. The session will begin with an overview of historical barriers faced by marginalized groups in outdoor environments and the founding of FI. Participants will then engage in interactive group activities designed to identify social field safety concerns, encourage dialogue, and foster understanding. We will conclude the workshop with actionable strategies and recommendations for institutions and organizations to create safer environments for their researchers. Participants will leave with an informational packet containing workshop content, practical solutions, and additional resources for further learning.

As part of our core introductory workshop, we cover:

  • What is social field safety and why do we care?
  • Who is affected?
  • How does discrimination manifest?
  • What are the consequences?
  • What can be done to mitigate these issues?

Activities and discussion topics include:

  • Identifying social field safety issues and solutions
  • Review accessibility fieldwork checklist and fieldwork code of conduct
  • Drafting social field safety action plan based on provided templates

Scientific writing: improve your manuscripts and grants

Instructor: Natalie A. Wright, Kenyon College

Time: 0800–1700

Location: Grand G

Target Audience: Anyone who wants to improve the clarity and impact of their manuscripts and grant proposals, and will likely be especially helpful to graduate students and postdocs.

Do your mentors and/or reviewers leave comments on your work such as “this is awkward,” “I don’t follow,” “confusing,” or “too wordy”? This workshop will help you understand why you’re receiving those comments and how to fix the problems. We will improve scientific writing by focusing on several key principles to improve the organization, flow, clarity, and impact of their manuscripts and grant proposals. Participants will learn how to organize their work to tell a compelling story. They will learn to create better flow among and within paragraphs and sentences. They will learn techniques for making their sentence-level writing clearer and more concise. They will produce more impactful manuscripts and grant proposals as a result.

The workshop will be divided into three main sessions: organization, flow, and clarity. Within each session, participants will learn key writing principles via short lectures. They will work through examples of how to apply those principles to edit and improve scientific writing. They will then apply those principles to their own writing, working within a previously drafted piece (e.g., a manuscript draft, grant proposal, or dissertation chapter). Participants will regularly break into small groups to learn from each other and help each other practice.

The end goal of this workshop is not to generate a polished piece, which would be impossible to do in just one day, but for participants to acquire skills allowing them to produce better writing long term.

Advanced topics in bioacoustic monitoring

Instructors: Tessa A. Rhinehart, University of Pittsburgh; Samuel M. Lapp, University of Pittsburgh; Lauren M. Chronister, University of Pittsburgh

Time: 0830–1130

Location: Grand H

Target Audience: Scientists at any career stage who are familiar with acoustic monitoring and basic bioacoustic classification (e.g. using BirdNET).

Bioacoustic monitoring has exploded in popularity thanks to the availability of inexpensive autonomous recorders and pretrained sound identification models like BirdNET. This workshop will help participants hone their skills beyond classification with pretrained models.

After briefly introducing foundational machine learning (ML) concepts, we will cover three emerging bioacoustic methods: custom ML algorithms using pretrained models, automated acoustic localization, and statistical methods for ecological inference from ML outputs.

Each section will include a lecture, a Q&A/discussion session, and a hands-on coding tutorial. One instructor will walk participants through our custom, interactive Python and R tutorials while other instructors circulate to troubleshoot and answer questions. Our tutorials are hosted on Google Colab, allowing participants to run code in a graphical interface without installing software on their computers.

First, we will look under the hood of pretrained convolutional neural network (CNN) models like BirdNET. We will describe how to reuse a model’s feature extractor – its learned representation of audio – to classify new species or sound types (e.g. begging) and even individually identify animals. Participants will download a pretrained CNN model from an online collection of models, apply its feature extractor to sample audio data, visualize clusters of feature embeddings using dimensionality reduction techniques, and create a shallow classifier.

Second, we will discuss automated acoustic localization, using recordings from a synchronized microphone array to pinpoint singing animals’ spatial positions. We will discuss applications of these data, including behavioral monitoring, abundance estimation, and individual ID. Participants will use the Python bioacoustics package OpenSoundscape to automatically detect and localize singing birds in synchronized data.

Third, we will demystify approaches for making ecological inferences (e.g. about occupancy & abundance) using ML outputs. We will introduce best practices and highlight common pitfalls unique to the biases in ML models. Participants will apply a recently-released statistical model for abundance estimation combining ML classifier outputs with human-verified ground truth data.

Take-home resources for participants will include a document with references for exploring later, transcriptions of each Q&A period, a copy of our slides and notes, and the tutorial code.

User-friendly tools for conservation: Automated no-code analyses of animal tracking data using Movebank and MoveApps

Instructors: Ashley K. Lohr, Movebank, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences

Time: 0800–1200

Location: Grand B

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 700 people from over 32 countries have registered for an account. There are currently over 110 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.

Self and Community Care: Strategies for fostering a community of support in ornithology

Instructor: Nathan Thayer, Virginia Tech

Time: 1300–1430

Location: Grand F

Target Audience: This workshop is designed to be beneficial for any member of AOS, as it focuses broadly on building caring strategies to support scientists, conservationists, and others engaged in ornithology across career stages and types.

As stress, uncertainty, and difficulties are common in every workplace, it is necessary for everyone to develop skills and relationships which promote wellbeing through care. In the social sciences, care has been used to discuss all of the actions, relations, and processes which center support, comfort, and wellbeing for others and ourselves. In a survey or members of the American Ornithological Society, Wilson Ornithological Society, and the Association of Field Ornithologists we conducted in 2024, our findings suggests that a large proportion of members would benefit from higher levels of care in their professions Further, our study suggests that care and belonging (two closely interlinked factors) play a role in strengthening retention. While our study highlights the potential of centering care, it also shows that care is experienced unevenly amongst membership.In this session, we will work together to discuss the ways in which care can be cultivated in our jobs, and to share strategies for self-care and resources for community care. This session includes group activities aimed at pooling self-care strategies, making visible the sources of support participants have found, and envisioning what a more caring ornithology, academy, and science could be. Insights from this workshop will inform our process for establishing new Flocks – affinity groups that will cultivate care and support for ornithologists – in ornithological societies. This session is expected to run 1.5 hours, and will be in-person.

A Beginner’s Guide to Bird Tracking Technologies

Instructor: Mike van den Tillaart, Lotek Wireless

Time: 0900–1030

Location: Grand C

Target Audience: Researchers new to tracking technology.

Living in the golden age of tracking technology, we are used to seeing exciting data-rich bird tracks, providing insights into the bird’s biology that are useful for their conservation. However, for those just starting to investigate the possibilities and looking at the wonderful array of tags and technologies, it can be a daunting task to choose the optimal solution. Not all technologies work for every research program.

This training opportunity aims to take beginners through the decision process via a PowerPoint presentation. Starting with identifying the questions that can be investigated with the different technologies, making sure they work within the bird’s environment and discussing behavioural factors that may change that. Welfare considerations are paramount and that will affect what to use and how to attach tags. Even within a technology there are a myriad of specifications that can make the difference between successful data collection and nothing. Learn from experts who’ve seen what works well over many years.

Bird Friendly Buildings: Hawk stickers don’t work, let’s discuss what does

Instructor: Heidi Trudell, Guardian Glass

Time: 1300–1500

Location: Grand H

Target Audience: This workshop is for everyone—whether you’re a student, professional, or just curious about safer buildings, you are encouraged to attend! By the end of the workshop, you’ll be equipped with actionable insights, tools and practical knowledge to advocate for bird-friendly design at home, on campus, at work, or in your community.

If you want to see bird friendly glass products up close and personal and have all of your bird friendly design questions answered, this is the session for you! This workshop will have a hands-on ‘show and tell’ display to experience how different bird friendly materials perform and interact with light and the environment.

Participants will learn glass basics, bird friendly product terminology, differences in glass technologies, and how to evaluate products by exploring best practices for different materials. We will also discuss how to highlight non-bird benefits of bird friendly glass to a general audience to encourage multipurpose use of bird friendly products.

This session will address building hazards, how to spot them, and explore case studies for new and retrofit solutions.

For people involved with campuses, we will address who to contact, and how to update ‘campus design guides’ to include bird friendly practices on future projects, as well as retrofits and glass replacement.

For new construction in a community, we will explore decision making timelines in the construction process provide insight on when bird friendly changes can be made, who makes them, and how to make a case for the use of bird friendly materials outside of areas requiring it by code.

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