Benjamin E. Leese
Benjamin E. Leese
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Microbiologist by trade.
Ornithologist by passion.
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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
I have 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.​
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I just finished an updated list of specimens of the Imperial Woodpecker, alongside a variety of wonderful colleagues. And I am also preparing a manuscript outlining more than 100 new records of the Carolina Parakeet that I have uncovered.
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.