John W. Fitzpatrick

John Weaver Fitzpatrick (born September 17, 1951, in Saint Paul, Minnesota ) is an American ornithologist primarily known for his research work on the South American avifauna and for the conservation of the Florida scrub jay. He was the Louis Agassiz Fuertes Director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology from 1995 to 2021.

Early life In 1974, Fitzpatrick graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with a B.A. in biology. His early inspiration to work on Bird conservation came from a talk by John Terborgh and his travels in the summer of 1974 Manú National Park in south-eastern Peru. His summer in Peru made him change his plans from pursuing graduate study in University of California, Berkeley. In 1978, he earned a Ph.D. in biology from Princeton University for his study of the foraging behaviour of tyrant flycatchers in Manu.

Early ornithological career After his PhD, he moved to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago as its curator. In 1988, he left for Florida to take over as the executive director and senior research biologist at the Archbold Biological Station, a private ecological research foundation in central Florida. Along with other biologists, Fitzpatrick has described several species and sub-species new to science such as bar-winged wood wren, cinnamon screech owl, royal sunangel, Manu antbird, the cinnamon-breasted tody-tyrant, and the cinnamon-faced tyrannulet.

Conservation of the Florida Scrub Jay Fitzpatrick's current research focuses on the ecology, conservation biology, and population genetics of the endangered Florida scrub jay, based on a nearly 50-year field study of a color-banded population since his work at Archbold biological station. He began studying the species in 1972 with Glen Everett Woolfenden. In 1985, Fitzpatrick and Woolfenden earned a Brewster Medal for their long-term study, the highest research award given by the American Ornithologists' Union. His work on this species has helped slow its decline. He has served on many professional ornithological committees, two species recovery teams (for the Hawaiian crow and the ivory-billed woodpecker), and advisory boards right up to the present. He has served on the National Audubon Society Board of Directors and has been the President of American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) from 2000 to 2002. Under his leadership, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has become a global leader in public engagement with birds and bird conservation through widely accessed online resources such as Avian Knowledge Network and Citizen science platforms such as eBird.

Directorship at Cornell Lab of Ornithology In 1995, Fitzpatrick became the Louis Agassiz Fuertes Director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York, succeeding Charles Walcott. He is also a professor in ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell University. He continues to teach and mentor graduate and undergraduate students.

Awards and achievements In 2005, Fitzpatrick won the Eisenmann Medal from the Linnaean Society of New York. In 2016, in a rare instance, the American Ornithologists' Union awarded him a second time (after the Brewster Medal) with the Ralph W. Schreiber Conservation Award.