CCSiC Fellow Spotlight: Brushstrokes for Birds

About Me

Greetings! I’m a fourth year PhD candidate studying the ecological causes and consequences of Common Tern aggression. Common Terns are migratory seabirds that are globally distributed, though my work primarily takes place during their summer breeding season in the Gulf of Maine.

I first became interested in studying this species while working for the National Audubon Society Seabird Institute, formerly Project Puffin, which seeks to restore and conserve seabird populations in Maine and worldwide. I began working for Audubon in 2018 as a research assistant and have since returned each summer, gaining experience as a supervisor of monitoring operations on one of their research islands and now, as a graduate student conducting her dissertation field work. What this means: I have spent almost two cumulative years of my life living alongside terns, puffins, and storm-petrels, and this experience has filled me with curiosity about their dramatic personal lives.

Because Common Terns are colonial and ground-nesting, interactions between individuals are frequent and dynamic, shaped by environmental conditions like the weather and habitat structure, as well as biological conditions like the amount of prey available. I seek to learn more about these candidate drivers of behavior, and what behavioral outcomes could mean for the reproductive success of these birds. Zooming out, the role that behavior may play in determining the success of individuals could scale up to affect population-level outcomes. I plan to use my findings to inform Audubon’s conservation strategy, as seabirds like the Common Tern are in decline, worldwide.

Brushstrokes for Birds

In Fall 2023, I was awarded a Community and Citizen Science in Conservation Fellowship, which gave me the platform and resources to give back to the research community that shaped me and expand the impact of my science. I decided to use my grant money to co-develop a public engagement project that would raise awareness around Audubon’s efforts in Maine and seabird conservation more broadly.

Beginning in November 2023, I met with the Audubon communications team to let them know I had been awarded a fellowship and was seeking collaboration. Surprisingly, one of the first questions they asked me was, “what do you want to do with the money?” It occurred to me that concept development is its own kind of labor. I came to the next meeting with a couple of ideas, and so did my collaborators. By the end of January, we had settled on the idea that we would later call, “Brushstrokes for Birds,” and I submitted a proposal and budget for the administration of my fellowship funds.

That summer, joining forces with Audubon’s Amy Welshimer (Outreach Education Assistant) and Kim Faux (Communications Manager), we solicited 5×5 painted canvases from the Maine public and beyond to display online and in the Project Puffin Visitor Center for purchase. Funds would go to seabird restoration efforts. Amy and Kim prepared instructions and paint kits to send out to participants, who could sign up online or by following a link on a pamphlet that was distributed to a variety of institutions and art communities in Maine. We also contacted potential venues, including a local brewery and several galleries, that could display the canvases we received. By the end of August, we had 85 submissions and counting!

Reflections

The CCSiC Fellowship gave me the opportunity to co-develop a project with a beloved collaborator and invest in a community that has supported my science for many years. I learned that this process takes time, that creativity is labor, and that compromise is necessary to arrive at consensus about the project we wanted to move forward. 

While we are still seeking a host for displaying the canvases for purchase, we have also received many positive testimonies about the painting process. If this venture is successful, it could serve as a nest egg for future, creative, public engagement projects!