By Bryan Watts4/2/2020 In late February of this year, CCB dispatched a team of five biologists including Marie Pitts, Laura Duval, Chance Hines, Bart Paxton and […]

By Bryan Watts4/1/2020 For the fifth time in as many years, CCB biologists have traveled to Panama to train local biologists and volunteers on shorebird field […]

By Bryan Watts 3/31/2020 One of many things that the Covid-19 pandemic will be remembered for is the introduction of the term “social distancing” to the […]

By Bryan Watts1/26/2020 Chance Hines and I arrived in cluster 13 of Piney Grove Preserve more than an hour before sunset.  We knew the roost cavity […]

By Bryan Watts 1/23/2020 The Center for Conservation Biology has joined forces with the North Carolina Wildlife Commission to estimate the number of cormorants that spend […]

By Bryan Watts 1/22/2020 Since late August 2019 when the first large, black globs of crude oil began washing ashore along the coast of Brazil, the […]

By Bryan Watts 1/21/2020 By any standard 2019 was a good year for peregrine falcons in Virginia.  The breeding season was the most productive in the […]

By Bryan Watts 9/30/19 Many North American residents flee their homes during the cold winter months to spend time in Aruba.  Due to its dry climate […]

By Bryan Watts 9/30/19 Few experiences take us back to the Halloweens of childhood like climbing up into a silo or hayloft at night and hearing […]

By Bryan Watts 9/15/19 For the fifth spring season, Fletcher Smith led a field team working with red knots along the South Atlantic Coast.  The rufa […]

By Bryan Watts9/13/19 Woodpecker clutches are like a box of chocolates – you never know what you are going to get.  Some years are all hat […]

By Bryan Watts 9/11/19 Dolphin ecologist turned film maker Jennifer Lewis is making a new film titled “There are Still Wizards” (visit the film’s IFP site […]

By Bryan Watts | bdwatt@wm.edu | (757) 221-2247July 11, 2019 Sable Island, lying some 180 kilometers off the northeast coast of Nova Scotia, and Assateague Island, […]

By Bryan Watts | bdwatt@wm.edu | (757) 221-2247July 6, 2019 Red-cockaded woodpeckers in Virginia had a record-breaking breeding season in 2019, taking another step along their […]

By Bryan Watts | bdwatt@wm.edu | (757) 221-2247July 5, 2019 The Center for Conservation Biology has compiled the results of the 2018 colonial waterbird survey that […]

By Bryan Watts | bdwatt@wm.edu | (757) 221-2247July 4, 2019 They were what remained following the devastating land clearing that ran up to and through the […]

By Bryan Watts | bdwatt@wm.edu | (757) 221-2247July 3, 2019 The Center for Conservation Biology at the College of William & Mary and Virginia Commonwealth University […]

By Bryan Watts | bdwatt@wm.edu | (757) 221-2247April 3, 2019 Hope, the whimbrel that was tracked with a satellite transmitter and became a living representation of […]

By Bryan Watts | bdwatt@wm.edu | (757) 221-2247April 2, 2019 An alarming percentage of the world’s shorebird species are declining.  Whimbrel populations using the Western Atlantic […]

By Bryan Watts | bdwatt@wm.edu | (757) 221-2247April 2, 2019 Sometimes no matter how long you have worked with a species and no matter how wild […]

By Bryan Watts | bdwatt@wm.edu | (757) 221-2247March 30, 2019 With 32 occupied territories, Virginia supported the largest breeding population of peregrine falcons ever known to […]

By Bryan Watts | bdwatt@wm.edu | (757) 221-2247March 29, 2019 Mitchell Byrd turned 90 in August of 2018, but in early March of 2019 he toed […]

By Bryan Watts | bdwatt@wm.edu | (757) 221-2247January 17, 2019 Some species creep forward across the landscape.  They fortify their troops and slowly take ground with […]