About Me
Growing up exploring Pennsylvania State Game Lands with my dad, our yellow lab blazing the trail, I developed a fascination for the organisms around me. While earning my bachelor’s degree at Penn State University, I dove into my first nature job as a guide for an outdoor orientation program, using backpacking to connect incoming freshmen with each other and the natural world. My love of ornithology sprouted while volunteering at the local bird banding station and led to a summer position as a technician for an avian research project at a remote field camp in Arizona. It was an honor to forgo many showers, chase many fledglings, and process many samples with the fellow nature-enthusiasts of Bird Camp! I am now pursuing my master’s degree while studying the winter ecology of the endearingly fierce Loggerhead Shrike (Lanius ludovicianus), a declining predatory songbird, and possible effects of agricultural practices across the Mississippi Alluvial Valley. Wherever my career may take me, I know my true home will always be waiting in the great outdoors.
Master's Thesis
For my Master's thesis, I studied the winter ecology of the fiercely charismatic Loggerhead Shrike. My research involves many aspects, including behavior, apparent survival, site fidelity, and movement, habitat selection using both remotely sensed data and measurements from the field, and physiology. I am collaborating with specialists in isotopic and genetic analyses to assign our banded shrikes to subspecies and determine whether they are migratory or sedentary. We are looking at how these grassland-associated birds are adjusting to the altered landscape of the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, which has been converted almost entirely to intensive agriculture. I am interested in combining both field and lab work to understand mechanistic workings at the cellular level and using that understanding to make inferences about individual- and population-level health and behavior.
Catching a Loggerhead Shrike
Using this modified potter trap designed by collaborators, shrikes are lured in through a trap door with a mouse used as bait (safely protected within a smaller wire cage).