The Finch Research Network

Matt and Patrick talk about the launch of FiRN – the Finch Research Network and their dedication to the study and conservation of finches and their habitats globally.

Matthew A. Young, M.S. is Executive Director and Founder of the Finch Research Network (FiRN). He has been observing and enjoying nature since a very young age. He’s lived in Central New York the past 22 years and it was during this time when he really started studying everything from birds to orchids, bogs and fens.

Patrick Franke is a field biologist and recordist. He has been involved in nature conservation since his early youth. Getting interested in sound recording in 2000 paved the way to the field of bioacoustics and thus to ornithology in general. He completed his sound art studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig with a diploma. 2008 Patrick started working as a field ornithologist and primarily does ecological surveys both onshore and offshore. Patrick was chairman of the tradition-steeped Leipzig Ornithological Association, member of the Saxon Rarities Committee and deputy spokesman of the Bioacoustics working group in the German Ornithologists’ Society.

He regularly gives lectures and workshops and has been involved in bird ringing projects for many years. His research is focused on acoustic identification of birds and taxonomic issues in the Western Palearctic and Central Asia. In 2012 he founded Birds-in-Flight – an online ID-Guide for the identification of Western Palearctic migratory birds. Patrick’s collection contains more than 15,000 sound recordings of birds. He has made a large part of his collection available to archives, research projects, information centres, museums and for ID guides. Since he first read about crossbill call types in 2006 he has been working intensively on Eurasian populations and has collected several hundreds of sound recordings of crossbills since then. Web: singwarte.info & birds-in-flight.net.

Should be an interesting evening of finch talk!