SAN DIEGO—Not every ornithologist starts out loving birds. Ryan Terrill did. A lifelong birder and the San Diego Natural History Museum's new curator of ornithology, Terrill’s appreciation for the feathered animals has been at the foundation of his career. It's also something he is eager to share with communities in San Diego and Baja California as he steps into the new role.

Originally from Santa Cruz, and most recently serving as the science director at the Klamath Bird Observatory in Ashland, Oregon, Terrill has spent his life studying the birds of the West Coast of the U.S. and South and Central America. He brings a curiosity for understudied aspects of the field, including feather molting strategies and spring montane migration in Southern California and Baja California.

Terrill is only the sixth ornithology curator to join The Nat in the organization's 153-year history, replacing Philip Unitt, who served as curator for 37 years and will remain an emeritus curator of birds and mammals.

Terrill's arrival to The Nat marks an exciting new chapter for the organization. The Museum is officially recognizing ornithology and mammalogy, previously combined into one department, as two distinct departments. As part of the change, the Museum's accomplished mammalogist, Scott Tremor, has been promoted to associate curator of mammals. The Museum is also delighted to announce Kevin Clark, previously the director of BioServices, as the new vice president of science and conservation.

These staffing changes reflect the organization's commitment to the robust study of the region's biodiversity and to the care and preservation of the Museum's collection of 9 million specimens and objects.

"Ryan has a stellar background in avian collection, curation, and research and will bring a wealth of skills to our museum," Clark says of Terrill. "He has experience with research expeditions to Latin America and has co-published new species descriptions, as well as worked on avian genomics studies and is researching avian feather molt strategies. Plus, he is a great science communicator and a top birder."

Terrill hopes to continue his research on conservation and dive deeper into how climate change influences birds of Southern California and Baja. He also plans to use both historical and modern data to understand changes in bird populations—research he's already working on in Mexico.

In fact, he's currently finalizing a publication that compares museum collections and modern observations to understand the distributional change of birds in Mexico over the past 100 years. To aid in the work, he and his team developed a novel research method to estimate the probability of detecting a bird in a certain location. "We were able to combine millions and millions of data points across really different types of effort, which was a cool application of this method," he says.

Of all his research, one of Terrill's most unique interests is feathers. Terrill envisions a feather lab at The Nat to analyze feather structure and function, and he wants to pursue how feather functions interact with and influence where and how birds live. Building on some of his past work, Terrill also aims to research fall molt-migration in Southern California and Baja.

"Molting is the primary investment birds make in their own survival every year," Terrill explains. "Feathers are closely tied to everything birds do in their lives, like staying warm and dry, flying, catching food, getting away from predators, and signaling to each other."

As birding has grown in popularity in both the U.S. and Latin America over recent years, Terrill hopes to use that momentum to bring the public into his work on both sides of the border. He points to community science projects, such as City Nature Challenge and the Border BioBlitz, that allow people to help collect data and make observations to be used in scientific research.

Terrill earned his B.S. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from UC Santa Cruz and his Ph.D. in Biology from Louisiana State University. He conducted his postdoctoral research in the Moore Lab of Zoology at Occidental College, where he led a team to detect daytime bird migration in the western San Gabriel Mountains.

He speaks enthusiastically about all his past experiences, but working at The Nat is a much-anticipated next adventure.

"It's a fantastic institution for science and outreach and public engagement," Terrill says. "This really is my dream job in so many ways."

Since 1910, the Museum's Department of Ornithology has grown its collection to almost 53,000 bird specimens. Each specimen in the collection offers a unique piece of information about a species’ natural history and is an active source of biological data. Whether the department is preparing bird specimens in the lab, collaborating across the border to conserve our wetlands, or surveying our canyons for birds, this team works tirelessly to understand and protect our region’s wildlife.

About the San Diego Natural History Museum

The San Diego Natural History Museum (The Nat) is one of California’s oldest and most respected cultural and science institutions. Founded in 1874 by a small group of naturalists, the Museum works to conserve nature through science and discovery. The Museum is located at 1788 El Prado, San Diego, CA 92101 in Balboa Park. For more information, visit sdnat.org. To stay up to date on Museum news, follow The Nat on Instagram and join the discussion on Facebook.

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