Laura Erickson will talk about how courtship, mating, and parenting vary wildly among different birds, from the lifelong devotion of American Crows to the dalliances of Eastern Bluebirds, from Bald Eagles’ focus on home improvements to the female Ruby-throated Hummingbird’s Rosie the Riveter’s lifestyle. Come along on a romance-fueled romp through the love lives of several New York birds, with illustrations from The Love Lives of Birds and photos from her Into the Nest: Intimate Views of the Courting, Parenting and Family Lives of Birds. Laura weaves accurate scientific fact with humorous and insightful parallels between human and bird.

Laura Erickson, former science editor at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is author of twelve books about birds, a former wildlife rehabber who specialized on nighthawks, and a columnist and contributing editor for BirdWatching magazine. In 1986, Laura created “For the Birds,” the longest-running radio program about birds in the United States. In 2014, she was given the American Birding Association’s Roger Tory Peterson Award. To learn more about Laura, please visit her website: lauraerickson.com.