10 Jul It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! No, Wait. It’s Just a Bird.

After giving my Gold Rush 101 talk, I decided to focus on my upcoming pop-up booth for World Migratory Bird Day. I got lots of amazing supplies from LHIP, and now I’m working on adding little fun facts about birds to my booth. I want to also have easily readable information on the ten birds being highlighted this year for WMBD. It’s been a few months since I finished my Ornithology course, but I still have all my notes and recordings from the class. It’s so fun that my previous experience has allowed me access to enough resources to complete this project. I can’t wait to tell my professor this fall all about how his information allowed me to bring energy and excitement to this little booth.

I have always had an interest in birds, especially the little barn swallows that would nest under my window growing up. When I learned that I could be working on a booth solely dedicated to them during my internship, I was ecstatic. I know that this year, the program is focusing on water conservation and how it affects birds worldwide, but I’m also hoping to talk about programs dedicating to turning off unnecessary lights at night. I’ve volunteered at the Biodiversity Research and Teaching Collections back in College Station for about 2 or 3 years now. They recently started working with the Lights Out! program in Dallas to petition the city to turn off bright lights at night. The Teaching Collections would receive window strike bird specimens that we would then prepare for a plethora of other experiments, such as testing breast tissue for different diseases or collecting any parasites found on these birds.

Long story short, I have had a lot of experience with programs focused on helping migratory birds survive during their migration seasons, and this project is exactly within my wheelhouse to complete. I’m really hoping it goes well, and will tell you all about it once it’s done!