To join, contact Andrea Stierle at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. in advance.

Jack will summarize his quarter century of research on goshawks which included radio telemetry work to help shed some light on their year-around movements as well as their summer habitat preferences during the breeding season. You won’t want to miss the short video segments that he shot from an observation blind showing some of the typical behaviors of adults provisioning and protecting their nestlings. 

John S. "Jack" Kirkley is a professor of Biology at the University of Montana – Western. He earned his bachelors degree in pre-professional zoology at Ohio Wesleyan University in 1975 and his masters and doctoral degrees in biology-ecology at Utah State University in 1985. He has now fulfilled a 36-year career as a biology professor at UM-Western in Dillon and plans to retire in June 2021.

As a scientist, Dr. Kirkley is an ornithologist who specializes in the study of birds of prey. For more than a quarter century he has conducted his studies on the ecology of Northern Goshawks, which breed in the mountain forests of southwestern Montana, focusing his investigations on their nesting habitats, as well as using radio telemetry to document their heretofore unrecognized use of valley habitats as preferred overwintering areas, in contrast to their old growth forest breeding habitat. From 2014-18, Jack opportunistically added the Great-tailed Grackle to his studies, because that sub-tropical species had begun to expand its breeding range into Montana. He documented the first confirmed instances of nesting by this rare species in Montana, as well as the first DNA-proven case of its hybridization with the Common Grackle.

Jack has served in leadership roles in both the local and statewide Audubon organizations, as well as being an activist for the Montana Wilderness Association's conservation issues, serving as an MWA Council member and as a Wilderness Walks leader. He has received the Founders Award from the Montana Wilderness Association and the Lifetime Achievement Award from Montana Audubon. 

In his retirement, Jack hopes to continue pursuing his research interests and his outreach and service to the community as an emeritus professor who will maintain a connection with the institution to which he dedicated his entire career, The University of Montana-Western.