Featuring recently salvaged and digitized images from rare glass lantern slides, Charlie Cowling, archivist at SUNY Brockport, will present images of New York birds taken by regional birders in the early 20th century.

Our area was an important center in the development of modern birding and ornithology, and the photographers that will be featured played a part in that history. Some, like Arthur Allen of Cornell, are remembered to this day. Others, like Verdi Burtch of Penn Yan, or Guy Bailey of Geneseo, were prominent amateur naturalists and birders a century ago, but are little remembered now.

Any birder will enjoy both the images, and hearing about the history of that era when birding transitioned from collecting skins with shotguns to using cameras and field glasses.

Charlie Cowling is the college archivist at the SUNY College at Brockport. An archivist and librarian for many years, he enjoys birding outside of work.