Brina Kessel

Brina Cattell Kessel Roof (née Brina Cattell Kessel, November 20, 1925 – March 1, 2016) was an American ornithologist, curator at the University of Alaska Museum, professor, and dean at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She was elected in 1960 a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and in 1973 a fellow of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU). She served as the AOU's president from 1992 to 1994. Kessel Pond at Creamer's Field Migratory Waterfowl Refuge in Fairbanks North Star Borough, Alaska is named in her honor.

Quotes

A maximum of 140 species of birds can be seen more-or-less regularly each year in interior Alaska. Of these species, however, only 28 can be considered regular winter residents, including two hawks, six tetraonids, five owls, four woodpeckers, and eleven passerines ...
(1967) . "Late-autumn and winter bird records from interior Alaska". Condor: 313–316.

Most shearwaters leave the Bering Sea during September and October (Hunt et al. 1981b), but stragglers have been recorded as far north as Barrow as late as any water exists, even to mid-November (Gabrielson and Lincoln 1959).
- Birds of the Seward Peninsula, Alaska: Their Biogeography, Seasonality, and Natural History (illustrated ed.). University of Alaska Press. 1989. p. 32. ISBN 9780912006291. (330 pages)

Young puffins are unable to fly when they leave the nest; they fall and flutter to the water below and swim immediately ...
- p. 223

The author takes a Grinnellian approach to identifying the major environmental factors that help define the species-specific niches of taiga birds in Alaska. In her study, she censused breeding birds on twelve 10-ha plots selected to represent fairly homogeneous tracts of each of the major habitats described for Alaska's taiga.
- Colleen M. Handel, (1999) . "review of Habitat Characteristics of Some Passerine Birds in Western North American Taiga by Brina Kessel". Western Birds 30 (4, Article 5): 217–218.

Encyclopedic article on Brina Kessel on Wikipedia
Brina Kessel (1925 – 2016). University of Alaska Museum Department of Ornithology.