Birds & Beer
Tuesday, October 14th at 7pm at Oak and Otter Brewing Company
Description: Join Torrey Gage-Tomlinson, Program Director at Morro Coast Audubon Society (MCAS), for a Mind Walk exploring how birds connect us to the changing world. Birds are more than feathered friends—they are vital indicators of ecosystem health and vessels for conservation. By observing their behavior and movements, we gain insight into how ecosystems are shifting both globally and in our own backyards, and how human actions intersect with these changes. Climate change serves as a key example, influencing migration patterns, breeding cycles, and habitats, and providing a lens through which we can understand broader ecological transformations.
Participants will see how community science brings this connection to life, offering people of all ages hands-on ways to engage with nature, observe wildlife, and contribute to real research. Programs such as MCAS’s FEATHER provide one example: students and volunteers gain skills, experience, and confidence while participating in conservation work, showing that protecting birds—and the ecosystems they depend on—is something everyone can take part in.
By exploring ecological and human dimensions of change, this program demonstrates how birds act as vessels for conservation—revealing shifts in ecosystems, inspiring community engagement, and showing how local action connects to broader, global-to-local conservation efforts.
About the Presenter: Torrey Gage-Tomlinson is a biologist, environmentalist, educator, and birder who is currently the Program Director for Morro Coast Audubon Society. He has a background as a field biologist, and has conducted a wide range of bird research from the Western United States to the Choco, in Northwestern Ecuador. A lifelong birder, Torrey has amassed a list of nearly 2,500 species in the Western Hemisphere and has traveled and guided extensively in North, Central, and South America. Originally from the Cascade foothills of Oregon, he currently resides in San Luis Obispo, California, where he leads and oversees environmental education and conservation initiatives on the Central Coast of California. In his free time, you can catch him playing music, biking, backpacking, or trudging through the rainforest for (yet another) little brown bird.