Speaker: Rich Howard & Dana Miller-Blair

Date/Time: Tuesday, March 10th | 6:30pm - 8pm

Title: Colombia: Wonderland of Biodiversity

Description of Program: While only the 26th largest country in the world, and the fourth largest in South America, Colombia is considered the second most biodiverse nation (after Brazil), hosting 10 percent of the world's species. It is the country with the most bird species - almost 2,000! - as well as the most orchids and palms. In this presentation, we will present some of the many landscapes of this beautiful country with an emphasis on the variety of its birds. Birds have evolved to fill every one of Colombia's many habitats from the stark paramo high about Bogota to the Santa Marta mountains in the north, from the Caribbean Sea to lush valleys and the Western, Central and Eastern Andes. We will also touch on Colombian culture and history.

Speaker Bio: Rich Howard has been a volunteer at Effie Yeaw Nature Center since retiring from environmental consulting in 2013. He has taught classes in beginning birding and the use of eBird, authored articles for The ACORN, led trips for Bird and Breakfast, and led Family Walks. His capstone project for the California Naturalist certificate was learning about invasive plants from Dennis Eckhart and spending many hours removing them from the Nature Study Area. He is also a volunteer for the Sacramento Audubon Society, where he leads field trips and serves on the Education and Field Activity committees. He has traveled to all seven continents in search of natural wonders and lived in Africa for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer. In February 2026, he will travel to Colombia for the third time; he has also visited the homelands of his grandparents, Mexico and Costa Rica, many times, as well as every other country is Central America, and Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Chile and Argentina in South America.

Dana Miller-Blair has been birding and photographing birds since retiring from the practice of medicine in 2017. Her first mentor was Rich Howard who taught a class on birds of the American River Parkway at Effie Yeaw Nature Center in 2018. Since then, she has made several birdwatching trips to Central and South America. Her first trip to Colombia will be in February 2026. Although Dana is relatively new to the world of birdwatching, she comes from a family of natural scientists. Her grandfather, ornithologist Aiden Holmes Miller, a former director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at UC Berkeley, conducted extensive field research on Zonotrichia Sparrows during his 1957-58 sabbatical (funded by a Guggenheim grant). He worked primarily at a research station at 6500 feet elevation in the mountains west of California. He explored regions like the central Andes and Amazon Basin including the Putumayo Jungle. Miller's Colombian sabbatical significantly advanced understanding of tropical bird ecology and enriched the MVZ collections, highlighting his pioneering work in avian biology. Dana is excited to explore some of the regions in which her grandfather worked, and to learn more about the research he did in Colombia.

Maximum Attendance: 50

Price: $10/member | $15/non-member