Benjamin E. Leese
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Benjamin E. Leese
Microbiologist by trade.
Ornithologist by passion.
I run a microbiology lab in a paper mill to test specialized filtration media for water purifcation. When I am not doing that, I am probably in my garden, at a baseball game, or trying to track down historical records of extinct birds.
Research Interests
My most recent manuscript describes more than 100 previously unreported records of the the Carolina Parakeet.
I have also written a series of manuscripts outlining historical records of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker north of its assumed southern range. I have uncovered records in Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio. The species appears on the list for Indiana because of my research.
I also updataed the list of specimens of the Imperial Woodpecker, alongside a variety of wonderful colleagues. I'm using those records to examine the species' unusual (for woodpeckers) habit of living in groups.
Recent
Publications
Additional records of the extinct Carolina Parakeet Conuropsis carolinensis Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club 145 (4): 324-346.
https://doi.org/10.25226/bboc.v145i4.2025.a1 With Alexander L.
Bond, Flavia A. Montaño-Centellas, Melissa D. Starking, Kevin R. Burgio.
The possible collection site of Maximilian zu Wied's Carolina Parakeet Conuropsis
carolinensis from ‘upper Missouri’. Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’
Club, 145(4):411-420. https://doi.org/10.25226/bboc.v145i4.2025.a8 With
Christophe Gouraud.
A Specimen of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) from
Indiana. Indiana Audubon Quarterly 103(3): 8-10. With Jamie Day
and Matt Courtman.
2025 update to the georeferenced sighting and specimen occurrence data of
the extinct Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis) from 1564-
1944. Dataset. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.28329254.v1, 2025.
With Kevin Burgio, Alex Bond, Melissa Starking, Flavia
Montaño-Centellas.