Workshops
Workshops
The RRF will be hosting a day of workshops on Wednesday, October 23, 2024 at the annual conference. Workshops are available to all conference participants with discounted rates available for students and Early Career Raptor Researchers (up to 3 years post-graduation) that are current members of RRF.
Workshops will be taught by leading experts and will focus on hands-on skill-building that is typically not available in traditional undergraduate or graduate classes. Courses lengths vary from 4-5 hours and will be scheduled to allow participants to select from a variety of courses throughout the day. Class sizes will be up to 20 students per class to provide an intimate and interactive learning environment. All raptor carcasses are used with federal and state permissions and copies of salvage permits are available upon request.
Please note the workshops will occur on the day before the scientific program commences and will require that participates arrive at the conference venue by 8:00 am on Wednesday, October 23. A fee will be charged for each workshop to help defray room rental and supplies.
Home Range Estimation in R
This half-day workshop will start off with a summary of the characteristics and relative benefits and drawbacks of the most commonly used home range estimation methods, with a focus on Minimum Convex Polygon, traditional Kernel Density Estimation, and the newer Auto-correlated Kernel Density Estimation. This review will also briefly discuss basic data organization, data cleaning, and error checking steps. This will be followed by a coding demonstration in R, covering the following key steps in home range estimation: 1) data cleaning, visualization and error checking, 2) estimation of MCP and KDE ranges in the adehabitatHR package, 3) AKDE estimation in the ctmm package, 4) tips for visualizing home ranges using both ggplot and tmap.
The workshop will end with a practice session, where participants can either work on their own data with the help of instructors, or work through home range estimation for a provided example movement dataset. The overall goal of the workshop is to familiarize researchers with the newer AKDE estimation method, highlight circumstances where this method is likely to be most appropriate, and help them become comfortable using the ctmm package in R. Participants should already be comfortable working in R. In addition the workshop code will rely on tidyverse functions (e.g., filter, select, summarize, map) and familiarity with these tools will be beneficial. Some pre-workshop materials reviewing some of these functions will be provided to participants.
Instructors: Dr. Joe Kolowski (National Zoo’s Conservation Biology Institute), Caylen Wolfer (Virginia Tech)
Participant cap: 15
Format: in-person only
Time/duration: 0800 – 1200; 4 hours
Cost: $60 regular/$20 ECRR
Raptor First Aid – In The Field
Intended for field researchers, Raptor First Aid will give an overview of common injuries seen in raptors, the first aid that can be provided and guidance on when to take a bird out of the wild. This workshop will show you how to build your raptor first aid kit and how to identify and treat minor injuries. There may be times that injuries are too severe for field first aid, and we will discuss how to make those judgement calls on what’s best for the bird. Please provide one example of an injury or time that you were unsure of how to medically help a bird. Prior to the workshop, instructors will solicit specific field scenarios or questions from participants to ensure proper coverage of relevant topics of interest.
Instructors: Kristin Dean and Sunny Cooper (Carolina Raptor Center)
Participant cap: 25
Format: in-person only
Time/duration: 0800 – 1200; 4 hours
Cost: $60 regular/$20 ECRR
Advanced Molt and Aging in Raptors
Molt is a significant and necessary stage in the annual cycle of a raptor, and a detailed understanding of the purpose, timing and process of molt can strengthen research and expand our understanding of raptor life histories. In this workshop we will first focus on learning the basics of molt, from terminology and topography to sequence and process. From this foundation, we will then discuss how to interpret patterns resulting from these processes to assess the age of birds, and apply this knowledge in group discussions with photos and spread-wings from museum specimens. Finally, we will walk through the value, purpose, and process for the collection of high-quality photographic documentation of birds in the hand to perpetuate future work on molt and add to our body of knowledge on this critical life stage. Participants will come away with a greater understanding of the importance of molt in raptor research.
Instructors: Nicole Richardson (Independent Researcher), Jesse Watson (HawkWatch International), Bryce Robinson (Cornell University), and Caitlin Davis (Cornell University).
Participant cap: 25
Format: in-person only
Time/duration: 1300 – 1700; 4 hours max
Cost: $60 regular/$20 ECRR
Harnessing Raptors with Transmitters
This class will cover the process of attaching transmitters (either VHF, satellite, or GSM) to raptors, from initial thoughts of the bird’s welfare to specifics of making a backpack harnesses and attaching telemetry units to birds. We will discuss and demonstrate several different options and methods for making harnesses, different attachment techniques (e.g., tailmount, patagial), and types of transmitters. The majority of the class will be hands-on, using a backpack harness to attach a transmitter to carcasses of different-sized raptors.
Instructors: Tricia Miller (Conservation Science Global, Inc.), Vincent Slabe (Conservation Science Global, Inc.), Michael Lanzone (Cellular Tracking Technologies)
Participant cap: 25
Format: in-person only
Time/duration: 0800 – 1300; 5 hours
Cost: $60 regular/$20 ECRR
Techniques for Handling, Auxiliary Marking, and Measuring Raptors after Capture
This course will give students hands-on experience in applying USGS butt-end and lock-on leg bands, as well as the following types of auxiliary markers: colored leg bands, feathers (through feather imping), and patagial markers for small and large raptors. Students will also have the opportunity to learn and practice proper raptor handling and measuring techniques. This will be a classroom-based course.
Instructors: Teresa Ely (Golden Gate Raptor Observatory), John Smallwood (Montclair State University), and Laura Echávez (Golden Gate Raptor Observatory)
Participant cap: 24
Format: in-person only
Time/duration: 1300 – 1700; 4 hours
Cost: $60 regular/$20 ECRR
Fundamentals of Bayesian Modeling
Software, such as JAGS, Stan, and NIMBLE, along with tons of code available on the internet and elsewhere, have made fitting complex Bayesian hierarchical models to data easier. However, applying these models and correctly interpreting the results still require a solid foundation in the fundamentals of Bayesian statistics. This course will not focus on a particular type of analysis, but rather cover some fundamentals of Bayesian modeling, including the basics of Bayesian inference, priors and how to choose them, conjugacy, fitting models to data, and some general hierarchical models. We will dive into Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), including how to code simple MCMC algorithms from scratch in R, as well as how to use software, such as NIMBLE and Stan. We will apply some basic occupancy and resource selection models (and possibly others) to raptor data as motivating examples. If you’d like to follow along and run code, a laptop with R, Rstudio, NIMBLE, and Stan installed is recommended. The material will be geared toward graduate students and other researchers that have experience or have had coursework in applied statistics or biometrics, including using R for (generalized) linear modeling or other frequentist approaches, but are interested in learning what Bayesian statistics is all about. If you’re unsure whether you have the necessary baseline knowledge for this course, please reach out to the instructor before signing up.
Instructors: Joseph Eisaguirre, PhD, USGS Alaska Science Center.
Participant cap: 25
Format: in-person only
Time/duration: 1300 – 1700; 4 hours
Cost: $60 regular/$20 ECRR
