Russell P. Balda, Regents’ Professor Emeritus at Northern Arizona University, has been teaching and conducting research there since 1966. Raised in Oshkosh Wisconsin, he lived on the edge of town where he noted the differences in bird life between rural and urban settings.

He received his B.S. degree at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. He earned his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees under the late Dr. S. Charles Kendeigh at the University of Illinois. For his doctoral dissertation he worked on the breeding birds of the Chiricahua Mountains in southeastern Arizona. He began studying Pinyon Jays and Clark’s Nutcrackers in the late 1960’s especially on their spatial and social mental capabilities. He has also done research on the value of dead trees to bird populations, Spotted Owls, cavity nesting birds, a terrestrial theory for the evolution of bird flight, and avian cognition. In 1998, Balda received the Miller Award from the Cooper Ornithological Society.

In 2004 Balda and A.C. Kamil received the coveted William Brewster Memorial Award from the American Ornithologist’s Union “for their groundbreaking work on North American corvid biology, especially cognition, memory, learning, and seed caching, and associated aspects of social behavior”. He retired in 2003.

Current e-mail: Russell.Balda@nau.edu.