From Pacific to Prairie and Pole to Pole

Leo is off to Sea Ranch to monitor the seabirds! We tested the scope and gathered warm clothes. Stay tuned for updates from the Sea Ranch crew.

Leo’s first observations!

We were invited to share our bird related research at the Pomona Valley Audubon March meeting. So much fun to present our research to fellow bird enthusiasts! Birds of a feather…..

Mimi and Andrea Discuss Skua Diets

Nola Presents How Light Impacts Hutton’s Shearwaters

Maddi and Alexa Give Presentation on California Sage Scrub Birds

Molly Presents How Murrelets Divide Up Duties

Nicole Discusses Seabird Diving in California Current

Ramon Reveals Seabird Behavior at Sea Ranch

In February, we presented at the annual Pacific Seabird Group conference. While there we met Kristina’12 and alum Steve Hampton. Sagehens were well represented!

From left to right:
Nicole’15, Mimi’15, (front), Nola’15, Kristina’12 (she attended two PSG meetings while she was a student in my lab and is now a seabird biologist with the Puffin Project in Maine), me, Steve Hampton (he is a Resource Economist who works in the Office of Spill Prevention and Response of the California Dept of Fish and Wildlife), Andrea’16, Ramoncito’15, and Molly’15.

Ramoncito explaining his poster on cormorant foraging ecology

Nola sheds light on the impact of lights on Hutton’s shearwaters

Andrea and Mimi give the scoop on skua poop.

Molly and me at her poster on Scripps’ murrelets

Nicole delves into Cassin’s auklet diving habits.

A shout out to the PARENTS who attended the meeting! Thank you for your support! Nicole’s parents are pictured above and Mimi and her Mom are below.

We had a great time celebrating the end of the semester. Gibson, the parakeet, was in heaven with a roomful of bird lovers!

Kristina’12 who studied Cassin’s auklet diving behavior for her senior thesis, has continued to pursue her passion for birds and remote islands after she graduated. She spends her summers working with the Puffin Project on islands off the coast of Maine and lately has been studying passerines with the Biodiversity Research Institute.

http://www.pressherald.com/2014/09/21/a-bird-in-the-hand-is-hopefully-healthy/

Kristina with a black and white warbler she caught in a mist net.

A Pomona Blue Blue-Jay and Kristina.

Last Sunday Neha’14 came in from Costa Rica, Jamie’14 from La Jolla, Sophie’14 from Los Angeles, and local alums Rose’14, Nai’14, joined seniors Ramon’15 and Dakota’15 and Prof. Karnovsky for breakfast! It was so great to hear about explosive frog breeding events, catching and tagging sharks, writing about biodiversity, working for social justice, building ponds and infusing a sauna with local herbs, making documentary films and applying for international fellowships to do conservation work!

From left to right: Ramon, Nai, Dr. K. , Dakota, Neha, Rose, Sophie, Jamie.

Last week students shared their summer research at the Pomona College Summer Undergraduate Research Poster Session. Nicole’15 shared her work creating computer programs to  analyze diving data in her poster, “Automating the Analysis of Cassin’s Auklet Diving Patterns Using Time-Depth Recorders and Python Programming.” Ramon’15 presented his poster on the study he carried out at Sea Ranch this summer, “The Bigger the Beak, The Faster You Seek: Foraging Time and Offspring Provisioning Among Pelagic Cormorants.”  Alumna Sophie’14 returned to present her findings on the expansion of Common Murres on Gualala Point Island in her poster, “Common Murres, Cormorants, and Citizen Science; Sharing Space on Gualala Point Island.”

Ramon focuses in on feeding rates

Nicole gets deep into the details of diving

Sophie says seabirds share space

Dakota’15 is spending her summer at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Colorado on an REU grant (Research Experience for Undergraduates).

Dakota on top of Mt Avery!

Charlotte Dohrn’13  who wrote her senior thesis with me is following her passion for sustainable fisheries and is at the UW Fisheries Research Institute field camp on Lake Aleknagik, AK  helping to collect data on the run size and population structure of the sockeye salmon runs.  She writes, “We’ve been counting the salmon (alive, senesced, female, male, bear kill, etc.) in the streams, taking otoliths, seining for resident fish, and collecting bear hair samples for genetic analysis.”

Charlotte with adult male sockeye!

Ready to explain my project!

So starts my 6th week working on my programming project. I’m currently working on putting my programs together so that whole files of data can be analyzed automatically when imputed into the interface I’ll be designing later this summer. The challenge is finding patterns in the file that allow the program to understand when a set of data is starting and ending so that it can be analyzed but the correct other program.
Last week I took a break from programming to create and present a poster on my project at a HHMI conference at Harvey Mudd. It was great to see what other people around me are working on and to meet some of the other people on campus as well as see enthusiasm for my project!

Explaining the behavior of auklets to someone who also works with analyzing ecological data

Here are a few more updates from recent grads. Nikki’13 who worked on the murrelet project counting zooplankton, spent the last year having all sorts of tropical wildlife adventures and is off to veterinary school in the fall! You can read about her amazing year here:

Nikki’s blog

Rose’14 was a student in my Aquatic Ecology class. She is working as a native plants landscaper and climbed Mt. Whitney this summer! Before Jamie’14 went to Sea Ranch, he and Claire’14 visited Laura’14 in Alaska!

Class of ’14, Jamie, Claire and Laura!

Neha’14, who worked on the video analysis of nesting murrelets is studying red eyed tree frogs in Costa Rica! She is with Cassandra’14 who worked on the Antarctic otolith project.