Have you ever struggled to describe which tree a bird is in? Have you ever struggled to identify a tree making it difficult to know how to manage it? Join local arborist, ecologist and birder Ryan Gilpin for a series of online and field classes designed to help birders more confidently navigate the plant world. Ryan will focus on observing specific characteristics of trees to gather more information. This information can be used to assign a name to a plant, but the goals of the workshop are more about observing and describing than naming.

Field Trip: Participants will be offered the choice of Sellwood Park (mostly non-native species) or Oaks Bottom (mostly native species) to practice identifying. Perhaps there will be time for both. If the birds are out and active, the group will bird the park and practice using as specific of language as possible to describe where we are seeing the birds and how they are interacting with the plants around them. If the birds are quiet, participants will find flowering trees and dig into the details of how we can differentiate between their flowers. Flowers are often not around for very long and the timing is very important when identifying trees by their flowers.

 

Meet the Instructor

Ryan Gilpin

Ryan has worked primarily as a consulting arborist for the past 12 years (Nidus Consulting), but consistently finds ways to merge arboriculture, ecology and conservation. Ryan is a founding member and chair of Tree Care for Birds where he has written Best Management Practices and has trained hundreds of arborists in minimizing impacts to nesting birds during their work. In order to train arborists about birds, Ryan started going on walks and taking classes with Golden Gate Bird Alliance. It got out of hand and Ryan now spends much of his free time lugging a scope around the great places that Portland has to offer. Ryan lives in St. Johns and is particularly connected to the Columbia Slough Watershed leading monthly, casual bird and tree walks in some of Portland’s best (and probably weirdest, most industrial adjacent) habitats.

Register!