The forum speech given on Friday the 14th of April was very interesting to me. Dr. Kirsten Murtagh, the Associate Vice President of The Northern Campuses of FAU, gave her speech on bird watching in Southern Florida. She started out her talk with a quote from Walt Whitman. He said that vagueness and ignorance helps enjoyment. She quoted Whitman because, although she may not know exact scientific details about birds, she enjoys them and loves to watch them.
Her main goal is to know what to tool for when looking at birds. She gave a brief background on birds that are commonly found in Florida. There are at least 14 habitats including marshes, forests, and swamps. There are 180 species that live and breed year-round in Florida and some 300 species that come in season. She then gave a brief outline of the type of birds she was going to discuss in her talk; 12 common birds, 12 Florida birds, and 6 white-winged birds. She then walked us through the following birds and told us how to characterize birds by size, color, markings, eye-rings, crown colors, tail color and shape, and bill shape.
The first set of slides was the common birds. The first bird shown was the Burrowing owl, who lives on the Boca campus and is our school mascot. The bird digs his home, is nocturnal and stands 9-11 inches. He i
