The Friends of San Pedro Valley Park welcome Dr. Jack Dumbacher from the California Academy of Sciences. He will present his lecture Poisonous Birds and Chemical Defense in New Guinea Birds on Tuesday, November 9 th at 7 pm. Poisonous birds, you say? Never heard of such a thing! With the witches, ghosts, and goblins of Halloween night and longer darker nights ahead, this should be just the right time for some strange things that are found in nature. Dr. Dumbacher will give us a fascinating lecture on these amazing toxic birds, and who knows, these poisons may have something in them which will prove helpful to the medical world.

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About the talk: New Guinea is a large tropical island that hosts a variety of amazing birds – including some of the world’s only poisonous birds, the Hooded and Variable Pitohuis.  About three decades ago, Jack Dumbacher accidentally discovered that the Pitohuis carry poisons, which has led to multiple scientific studies into the poisons, how they work, how the birds might use them, where they get them, and more recently, how the birds resist being poisoned by their own toxins.  Jack Dumbacher will take us on a trip to New Guinea to learn about these fascinating toxic birds, their chemicals, and what we know about them.  Dumbacher is curator of Birds and Mammals at the California Academy of Sciences, and he studies birds and mammals in Africa, Galapagos, New Guinea, China, and of course, California.

About the speaker: Jack Dumbacher is curator of Birds and Mammals at the California Academy of Sciences and professor of Biology at San Francisco State University.  He has been working on California Barred Owls since 2006. In addition to the Barred Owl work, Dumbacher studies the genetics and relationships of birds and mammals from Africa, New Guinea, Galapagos, China, and of course, California. He studies some of the world’s only poisonous birds, the Pitohuis and Ifrita of New Guinea.