Observing and Recording Birds at the Chester River Field Research Station

He received an undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences, with a concentration in Neurobiology and Behavior, from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He went on to complete a masters degree in Biological Sciences at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee working on song organization and complexity in Gray Catbirds (Dumetella carolinensis).

As a graduate student in the Department of Biology at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, he worked under Steve Nowicki. There he studied song perception in chickadees (Poecile spp.). Bernie received his PhD from Duke and went on to a postdoc with Bob Dooling at the Center for Comparative and Evolutionary Biology of Hearing at the University of Maryland. There he worked on auditory mechanisms in a range of bird taxa including: songbirds, parrots, woodpeckers, owls, and hummingbirds.

In addition to doing sound analysis, operant conditioning, and physiological work in the laboratory, Bernie spends about half his time in the field, and he has been affiliated with a number of field sites and field stations. These include the Duke Forest, NC and the Barrier Lake Station of the University of Calgary's Biogeoscience Institute in the Canadian Rockies (chickadee song), the American Museum of Natural History's Southwest Research Station (SWRS), AZ (small owl and hummingbird vocal production and perception), as well as the University of Nebraska's Cedar Point Biological Station (sparrow song).

For the past decade much of his field work has focused on the acoustic communication and social behavior of Grasshopper Sparrows (Ammodramus savannarum). This work takes place in collaboration with many students and colleagues and is focused around a population of the eastern subspecies in a restored grassland at the Chester River Field Research Station, MD. Additional work includes comparative studies with several other subspecies at various locations in North America and the Caribbean, including the remaining populations of the critically endangered Florida Grasshopper Sparrow.