Banding merlin chicks in Wisconsin

What has two eyes, is most active at dawn and dusk, and can identify red-bellied woodpeckers based on their smell alone? While that certainly could describe a wild animal it actually describes me, a Virginia Tech student! Deciding to come to Virginia Tech to get my bachelor’s degree in Wildlife Conservation was not something I expected to happen when I graduated from high school nearly a decade ago. I have lived a very unpredictable and transient life that resulted in many experiences, both good and bad, that ultimately lead me where I am today. I decided to come to Virginia Tech due to the well-established reputation, small classroom size, and welcoming culture of the College of Natural Resources and Environment. In my time here I have seen that I made the right decision. Virginia Tech has allowed me to flourish in new ways while sharpening skills I already possess. I am always excited to see how I will learn and grow with every upcoming semester. As a non-traditional student I have enjoyed interacting with people from diverse backgrounds and getting to know their journeys that lead them to Virginia Tech while reflecting on my own experiences.

While I have always loved nature in all its forms I have held an interest for birds for as long as I can remember—when I asked my parents when my interest in birds began my mom told me a story about when we lived in Japan when I was a baby. She would take me to the park and according to her and I would beam in delight whenever I saw pigeons in the park, reaching out and wanting to interact with them. My interest in birds lead me to become a birder and become involved in wildlife rehabilitation—in high school I was trained to care for baby birds and did so for three years at a wildlife rehabilitation center. Since then I’ve volunteered at other centers around the country and am currently a staff member at Southwest Virginia Wildlife Center of Roanoke (SWVAWCR) where I specialize in the rehabilitation of passerines and designing non-medical aspects of care by incorporating natural history into that patient’s care plan. Before I transferred to Virginia Tech I became a member of the New River Valley Bird Club, a certified Virginia Master Naturalist, and gained experience bird banding raptors and songbirds through the Institute of Bird Populations and the University of Wisconsin-Steven’s Point. Those experiences helped cement for me that studying birds with the hopes of aiding them was being something that I want to spend my life doing.

Admitting a young orphaned American mink at SWVAWCR

Public outreach event at Kroger, educating about wildlife with non-releasable educational ambassador animals

While my interest in wildlife is broad I’m particularly interested in understanding the rapid decline of formerly common species and the conservation of at-risk species, wildlife disease and parasites, human dimensions, education, population dynamics, exploring natural history, entomology, ornithology, and understanding how the behavior of wildlife impacts their daily lives. I’m especially interested in better quantifying data collected by wildlife rehabilitators. Wildlife rehabbers can and do collect a lot of data that would be useful to conservation science as a whole and I’m really curious as how rehabilitation, conservation science, and citizen science all can interact and benefit each other. As a personal example, I wrote protocol with Dr. Ashley Peele to adapt rehabilitation records to aid in the Virginia Breeding Bird Atlas, making it (as far as we can find) the first effort of a wildlife rehabilitation center to contribute data this way. I believe there are many other opportunities as well—the Center, working with Dr. Karen Powers of Radford University, has also helped document first county records of mammals in Virginia. Rehab practices may also be useful to help develop new captive-rearing techniques of at-risk wildlife species—as we face major threats to biodiversity insights as to how to care for odd species in captivity may become increasingly important if we can't intervene fast enough to save wild populations. If we think creatively we can have a more holistic understanding of the world.

In addition to my rehabilitation background I have expanded my horizons by studying abroad in Panama, where I helped extract tropical birds out of mist nets and received a greater understanding on what it means to conserve nature in other parts of the world. Through volunteering and holding jobs in various labs across campus I have learned that I am enthusiastic about research and developing novel knowledge. Whether it be fixing mist nets, counting woolly adelgid cisterns, looking at camera trap photos, surveying for song sparrows, or reading newly published papers I'm excited and driven to collect data and think about new ways of applying what I know to other things. One thing I have done is write standardized protocol for songbird rehabilitation, creating a basic guide to every single species found in Virginia by incorporating traditional wildlife science, local expert knowledge, and my personal knowledge as a rehabber. I plan on finishing my last edits to this protocol in 2021 and submit it for review by the International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council for peer review and possible publication. I am also proud to be in the 2020-2021 cohort of the Leadership Institute in the College of Natural Resources at Virginia Tech which has been an opportunity for me to grow personally with a group of awesome people. After I graduate in the spring of 2022 I plan to go to graduate school to continue learning more about this wonderful world so I can help better protect it.

Banding a white-throated sparrow in West Virginia

Banding merlins

Rehabbing juvenile bald eagle

Banding American kestrels