Busy Bees : Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Assistant Headmaster Michelle Tuorto did a variety of activities with fellow classmates during a week at Cornell University’s Ornithology Laboratory.
September 2, 2019
I had the opportunity to spend a week this summer at Cornell University’s adult university taking a course in ornithology, the study of birds.
Assistant Headmaster Michelle Tuorto did a variety of activities with fellow classmates during a week at Cornell University’s Ornithology Laboratory.
The course combined some of my favorite things – being up in Ithaca, birds and nature, and learning – in a lovely package that included meeting interesting people from all over the country.
We started each day birding the Sapsucker Woods, located next to the world-renowned Lab of Ornithology. One morning we caught birds and learned how to measure and band them for scientific study. We saw dozens of preserved bird specimens, including extinct species like the passenger pigeon, in the Museum of Vertebrates, and listened to the largest collection of avian audio recordings in the Macaulay Library.
The bonus was being able to spend my afternoons and evenings visiting my favorite haunts around Ithaca like the farmers’ market and botanical gardens, and especially spending an evening with my mentor professor from the atmospheric science department.
As part of her class at Cornell, Ms. Tuorto releases a hairy woodpecker after measuring and banding her.
Being at Cornell gives me peace, and it was like spending a week in my version of a perfect world.
— Ms. Tuorto-Collins earned her undergraduate and master’s degrees from Cornell University.
