View looking up to the summit of Mount Cardigan
Most of the year, you’ll find me cooped up in a lab, mixing reagents for extracting DNA or running antigen tests for tick-borne pathogens in dogs. My lifelong love for animals led me to volunteer at my local wildlife sanctuary and job-shadow at my local veterinary clinic. Initially, I was there to learn about animals, but by the end, I stayed for the pathogens.
Not long after starting my volunteering and shadowing, COVID swept the nation, and pathogens were at the forefront of everyone’s mind. I didn’t think about pandemics before then, but I found myself curious about what makes a pandemic and stumbled across a book called Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen. I was hooked in the first few pages. Pathogens were no longer a vague, evil force to me—they were fascinating characters in almost every ecosystem imaginable.
While almost always framed as a purely malicious force, pathogens and parasites (in the right context) play a crucial role in the natural world as a balancing force for populations. However, in my studies, I became most interested in pathogens that become forces of chaos, making ecosystems imbalanced instead of regulated. I find spillover events (when a pathogen typically found in one species is transmitted to a different, “non-target” species) fascinating; they are rare and sometimes devastating when they do happen, and they often highlight the consequences of environmental disturbance.
Typically, pathogens find their favorite species naturally, adapting to specific immune systems to maximize their gain. Consequently, spillover events are very rare, but not impossible, under normal conditions. However, when non-native species are introduced, pollution renders populations immunologically vulnerable, or the climate changes, spillover becomes more likely. A perfect example is vector-borne diseases at northern latitudes like Vermont’s. As winters become warmer, vectors (animals that can carry a pathogen from one animal to another without becoming ill themselves), like ticks and mosquitoes, can survive in places they couldn’t before and expand their ranges north with climate change.
In the lab, I’m fortunate to see that change in real-time, contributing to projects on tick-borne pathogens in Vermont’s small mammals and avian malaria in Common Loons. While I love this work, I couldn’t help but feel the need to see where my samples come from and see these animals in their natural setting.
Working with VCE this summer has been immensely rewarding, seeing the animals I love in person and seeing how environmental disturbance affects them in real life. Birds hold a special place in my heart (I have a somewhat unattainable goal of seeing every species in North America before I die), and I’m proud to say I added 42 new birds to my Life List this summer.
During our first week, VCE’s summer interns and their supervisors hiked Mount Cardigan in New Hampshire, seeing firsthand how ecological communities change with elevation. Within the first 30 minutes, I was thrilled to hear the very shrill call of a species I hadn’t knowingly encountered before, a Broad-winged Hawk. I soon learned they’re common in Vermont, but I was still very excited.
Not long after starting our hike, Dr. Ryan Rebozo pointed out all the beech trees around us that were sadly already showing signs of beech bark disease. I had never noticed how ubiquitous the disease was in this area—almost every beech we saw had the characteristic lumps and bumps.
Other birds (confirmed by Dr. Desirée Narango) we encountered were the adorable Blackburnian Warbler (whose call I still remember for getting so high at the end I couldn’t hear it) and an elusive Red-breasted Nuthatch.
On our way up, we hoped to find some salamanders. By gently flipping some logs, we found many Red-Backed Salamanders. I didn’t realize how common they were (they make a sizable chunk of animal biomass in the forest). On top of one log, we even found Wolf’s Milk, a protist that looks like a fungus but is actually a plasmodial slime! Nearby, we also found a few Pink Lady Slippers, an adorable orchid I was surprised to see so many of.
Near the summit, the bird community changed dramatically. The Ovenbirds were exceedingly loud and confident (I learned you can draw them in shockingly close if you imitate their call). I added many new birds to my Life List, including a Canada Warbler, Blackpoll Warbler, Yellow-bellied Flycatcher, and White Throated Sparrow. These birds were entirely new (and exceedingly cute) to me.
On the way back down, I saw a Brown Creeper and heard a Purple Finch (although he was nowhere to be seen). Fortunately, Dr. Narango spotted him (he was 30 feet in front of me).
The next day, after Mount Cardigan, we interns arrived early and spent some time sitting in VCE’s backyard, which draws in many birds. I was lucky to add two new species to my Life List (a Scarlet Tanager and a Yellow-throated Vireo!). While outside, I heard from a staff member that the bird I wanted to see in person most this summer (a Green Heron) sometimes visits the pond in the backyard. While I was disappointed not to find one that day, I was still thrilled to see and hear some unexpected new additions to my Life List.
We spent our first full day in the Biodiversity Lab, processing small bees from May collected in Connecticut Audubon’s Smith Richardson Preserve. Bees are far more diverse than I expected, ranging from small, dark Carpenter bees I mistook for flying ants to Cuckoo bees, parasitic bees that I mistook for wasps. The Green Sweat bees were beautiful up close (shockingly iridescent and shiny).
I was thrilled to learn insect pinning for a few reasons:
I was excited about science communications because writing is something I struggle with. Most of my writing is lab reports, so I can be dry. It’s a skill I want to enhance since writing in a compelling, accessible way is crucial for scientists.
I tend to blurt out everything I know, and learning how to streamline that is so helpful since getting people to care about and understand what you study is one of the most important skills you can have.
On our first day with the tick team, we helped with a project analyzing swallow diets before surveying properties for ticks. Dr. Jason Hill taught us how to safely and effectively catch invertebrates with sweep nets and arrange a malaise trap to bring samples back to the lab. Among our favorite finds were a Virginia Ctenucha Moth, a little Skipper butterfly, and my personal favorite, a Flower Crab Spider.
While surveying properties for ticks, I was truly amazed at how many invertebrates you can find in any bush or tree in your backyard if you take the time to look carefully. A seemingly empty bush would rain Bark Louses, Thrips, and a myriad of other species when you shook them onto a beat sheet. It makes the world less lonely when you realize how many little lives are around you in your everyday life.
While I had seen ticks frequently in the summer (this is New England, after all!), I had only seen tick larvae and nymphs desiccated on small mammals in natural history collections. Before this internship, I was terrified of ticks, having seen the consequences of tick-borne illness in family members, in my work at veterinary clinics, and in my college’s vector lab. I hoped to gain some experience with ticks and learn from the experts to understand how these fascinating little animals behave. I’m thrilled with what I learned. Ticks are true survivors, equipped with ingenious adaptations to persist in their environment. They can even survive an entire laundry wash cycle with hot water (however, sending them through your dryer is a sure way to kill them). Evolutionarily, they are incredibly impressive. Still, I wouldn’t want them on me.
To round out our invertebrate-catching skills, Dr. Hill taught us how to capture butterflies with sweep nets safely. I was previously scared to catch butterflies because I didn’t want to hurt them accidentally, but now I know how to do it carefully and deliberately! This fritillary sat on my wrist for a while after I let it go from the net.
While I wasn’t exactly excited for an early morning drive, I was excited for a goose banding event in the Dead Creek Wildlife Management Area. While Canada Geese have always been a familiar sight, I realized that I knew very little about them. I didn’t know that their flight capabilities are pretty limited—as big birds, they need a sizable runway to take off. So, it was almost comical how easy it was to herd them into a pen.
Besides the geese, we also saw nesting Ospreys feeding their young.
At the Smith Richardson Wildlife Sanctuary, I was intrigued by how a coastal environment a few hours away compared to the Upper Valley’s natural spaces. Not only was this landscape distinctly unique from the meadows we observed further north, but the transects we surveyed for pollinators were distinctly different, too. This preserve was especially interesting because each area we surveyed was in a different state of native plant restoration, so seeing how the plant community correlated with the invertebrate community was fascinating. With all my past work with animals and their pathogens, I have sadly and unjustly neglected plants. I’m grateful to have learned so much about plant communities this summer, especially the importance of native plants. Next summer, I’m already prepared with a list of native flowers to look for at nearby nurseries so I can make my garden a little hotspot of pollinator activity (Wild Bergamot being at the top of that list).
I was also eager to see whether the tick species at the Smith Richardson preserve differed from Vermont’s, which they very much did. Only a few hours south, Lone Star Ticks comprised most of the ticks I saw. American Dog Ticks were also abundant to a lesser extent. Surprisingly, I didn’t see any Blacklegged Ticks (although that doesn’t mean they were completely absent). These differences in abundance made me wonder what environmental factors make each tick species thrive. I’m curious to learn what environmental factors might make one tick species more abundant and whether that can be used to predict the incidence of certain tick-borne illnesses).
I (knowingly) saw my first Spotted Lanternfly at this preserve. This invasive species is spreading rapidly throughout the northeast, emphasizing the importance of parasites in ecosystems (in their native habitat, their populations are regulated and balanced by parasitic wasps, but in the northeastern U.S., these parasites are absent). While I knew from past work that parasites and pathogens were important for regulating populations in wildlife, it’s something else to see what the total absence of needed parasites can look like.
I’m happy to report that I added four new bird species to my Life List at this preserve! Among those were Orchard Orioles, a Field Sparrow nesting on the property, a group of Purple Martins in the meadows, and a Rose-breasted Grosbeak. While not a new addition to my Life List, I was amazed to learn from Dr. Narango that Blue Jays can imitate the calls of Red-tailed Hawks. Initially, I was fooled and excitedly thought there was a Red-tailed Hawk nearby; however, I was even more thrilled to learn what Blue Jays are capable of. I wonder how many other bird mimics have fooled me in the past. Speaking of mimics, there were also a couple of Northern Mockingbirds nearby.
Only a few hundred feet from the preserve was a beach where I found other new species for my Life List! Snowy Egrets were fishing along the banks, and Great Egrets were fishing along the shore with Northern Rough-winged Swallows soaring above. A couple of noisy Killdeers were also making a fuss nearby while the Herring Gulls cried. Also pictured above is a crab I found; I don’t know my crabs well enough to guess which kind it was.
I was fortunate to attend the last day of VCE’s teacher workshop. I was pleased to attend the session since I was on the other end of the teachers’ classrooms in middle and high school not very long ago. I was lucky to have had science teachers who were honest about the gravity of climate change and conservation—I am where I am now because of it. While it’s easy to turn nihilistic and think it’s impossible to make a meaningful change when you’re only one person, my teachers’ goal was to frame the truth in a motivating and empowering way instead of a hopeless one. For instance, one useful tool is the USDA’s Climate Change Bird Atlas, which can show you expected future changes in bird abundance and distribution. The first image shows the “low change” projection for Winter Wrens, while the “high change” projection for Winter Wrens is shown in the second image. Even though it can look daunting, these projections can give us hope if we frame them correctly; if we and future generations work to minimize climate change, we get to keep our Winter Wrens.
When I was in middle and high school, learning about climate change felt especially hopeless because you feel like you’re inheriting a broken world that you did not decide to break. But I realize now that we very much have the power to save what we have left. Turning to nihilism is the easy way out; to ensure our future and the future of the next generation, we must realize that tangible change is possible and that we still have a world left to save.
As we drove to the Northeast Kingdom, I was giddy at the thought of finally coming face-to-face with a live Common Loon. Last Spring, I was fortunate to join the Wildlife Pathogens Lab at UVM, extracting DNA from Common Loon tissues collected from mysteriously dead loons. This extracted DNA was then tested for avian malaria (Plasmodium spp.) to explore how frequently this pathogen affects Common Loons. This project is especially interesting for a few reasons:
Despite technically working with Common Loons for months, I had never seen a living, healthy loon before. They did not disappoint; we were fortunate to see a loon family with fluffy brown chicks during our work with Eric Hanson! The loons’ sheer size still shocked me, even though I knew they would be large.
What stands out to me about our loon work this summer was its collaboration; deploying nesting rafts for loons is highly dependent on volunteers. The loon stewardship community we met among all the lakes we visited was very passionate about these birds. No one is an island, it seems. The biologists depend on volunteers’ observations and hospitality, the Wildlife Pathogens Lab depends on volunteers reporting dead loons and biologists sending them to be necropsied at organizations like VINS or the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts, and these organizations depend on labs like the Wildlife Pathogens Lab to screen for pathogens. No one person could do any of this alone.
With Kevin Tolan, we helped survey meadow properties to observe meadow birds, including Bobolinks and Eastern Meadowlarks. I was thrilled since these birds can be elusive, and I’m unfamiliar with grasslands. Seeing how invasive species can fundamentally change the understory community of grasslands was particularly interesting, especially regarding how they impact habitat viability for threatened grassland birds. One bird I did not expect to see was what I thought was an American Bittern in a marsh by the roadside (it caught me so off guard that I would’ve crashed the car if I had been driving!).
After hearing about the Mink Brook Nature Preserve during the teaching workshop, I visited and added two more species to my Life List (Belted Kingfisher and Eastern Wood-pewee!). I was also lucky to see a Ruby-throated Hummingbird flying above the brook.
The summit of Mount Mansfield feels otherworldly. The moss carpet and dense, lichen-enveloped conifers feel mystical and ancient. The short, bushy Balsam Firs make you feel like a giant. This was where I held and released my first songbird, a female Yellow-rumped Warbler, which was coincidentally my bird of the day. While I knew it would feel special, something about holding such a tiny soul in your hand makes you teary-eyed.
I banded my first bird under the supervision of Anna Peel, VCE’s summer bird banding technician. This little bird was a scruffy juvenile Dark-eyed Junco who stuck around nearby before flying off.
During our second loon trip, we joined seasonal loon biologist Eloise Girard and helped identify bands on an unknown Loon. This loon was very confident—he approached us when we splashed the water and got close enough for us to see his bands without needing binoculars.
On top of seeing such a character up close, I was impressed by the collaboration between scientists to identify this loon. Once we had the band colors, Eloise could access a database to find out this loon was not banded in Vermont but was, in fact, from New York!
The loon chicks on this lake were far larger than the little chicks we saw earlier in the summer. This chick was almost as large as the parents but still had the colors of a baby!
After dismantling an unused raft, we saw a few chatty Merlins in a nearby tree as an added treat to a bird-centric day!
As luck would have it, when we were repairing a different raft, we saw a beaver investigating our work, who splashed us while swimming away.
As if by fate, we saw a Solitary Sandpiper (Merlin’s Bird of the Day) picking at the shoreline on the lakes as we worked on the loon rafts.
With Dr. Ryan Rebozo, we helped conduct surveys of Woolly Beach-heather (Hudsonia tomentosa), a rare plant in the sand plains surrounding Lake Champlain. These adorable little plants (that look a bit like troll doll hair sticking out of the ground) are specialized to disturbed soils like sand plains. So, as human development encroaches on their habitat, preventing typical cycles of soil disturbance, suitable habitat for these plants is shrinking. Invasive plants are also encroaching on Woolly Beach-heather. Consequently, I found it very satisfying to spend time removing these invasive plants, including large Honeysuckle bushes. Hopefully, the Woolly Beach-heather can hang on a little longer.
By this point in the internship—with only one week left and all field work done—I had resigned myself to not seeing a Green Heron this summer. However, I was in luck! A flapping commotion on the low-hanging branches above the pond in the office’s backyard drew my attention. Once I got my hands on a pair of binoculars, I was astonished to find not one but three Green Herons! They were distinctly clumsy, wobbling on the branches as they reached down to the water and flapping their wings for balance. That, combined with multiple herons present at once, made me wonder if I was looking at juveniles, but I’m just guessing.
Before my first day at VCE, I was a little intimidated to work with people who know far more about wildlife and the natural world than I do. The more I delve into biology, the more I realize just how much I still must learn. I was relieved that the VCE staff are incredibly welcoming and care about learning more than anything. On top of all they already know, they are inquisitive people with a sense of awe for nature that I don’t often encounter. As lifelong learners, they have a special appreciation for sharing, and I’m grateful to have joined them, even if it was only for a few months. I hope to carry that curiosity with me as I continue my career and personal life. Not knowing something shouldn’t be intimidating—it should be motivating.
