Waking before dawn amongst the clouds and mist of New England and New York's highest peaks has become a way of life for biologist and Red Cedar science teacher, Brendan Collins. For the past seven years, Brendan and a team of biologist from the Vermont Center for Ecostudies (VCE), have been visiting these montane forests in search of the elusive Bicknell's Thrush (Catharus bicknelli). The Bicknell's is considered one of North America's most rare and range restricted songbirds and thus has become the focus of Brendan's avian research.
Sadly, nearly a third of the nation's 800 bird species are either endangered, threatened or in significant decline due to habitat loss and fragmentation brought about by human development, invasive species and climate change. The Bicknell's is no exception. Being considered somewhat of the canary in the coal mine when it comes to the health of Vermont's high elevation forests, the Bicknell's Thrush is a harbinger of the ecological shifts brought about by climate change. The Bicknell's Thrush has come to represent VCE's commitment to understanding and protecting high elevation forests as well as conservation across political boundaries.
The focus of this summer's research has been the attachment of solar geolocators to adult male Bicknell's Thrush across its breeding range. These tiny light gathering devises are harmlessly attached as backpacks meant to collect geographic information over the course of a full year.
The technology is actually pretty old in that researchers are simply using time and day length to geolocate the bird's position in relation to the sun. They do not work in real time but instead collect and store the data such that when they are recovered next year, VCE researchers will be able to calculate where the bird has been on any given day. The research promises to shed important light on the timing and location of Bicknell's Thrush migration as well as connecting breeding populations with discrete wintering sites in the Caribbean.Brendan has spent the majority of his time working on the summits of Mount Mansfield in Vermont and Slide and Plateau Mountains in the Catskills of New York. He has seen many beautiful sunrises and sunsets but has also been soaked to the bone on more than a few occasions.
Sunrise from the summit of Mount Mansfield, Vermont July 2009
For more information and details of Brendan's summer research visit the Vermont Center for Ecostudies webpage:
http://www.vtecostudies.org/
and Blog:
http://vtecostudies.blogspot.com/2009/07/bicknells-thrush-bonanza-on-slide.html
