Here at Cape May we are so lucky each year to have funding for a team of Seasonal Counters and Interpretive Naturalists who provide field data for our research projects and help to inform and educate our thousands of visitors during the Fall season. Here's a quick look at this year's team.
REBECCA ALLMOND
Monarch Migration Project Naturalist
Rebecca Allmond hails from a small town in Upstate New York. She is a biologist with a well-rounded background in both biology and the liberal arts. Pursing her love of nature she has worked in greenhouses, national parks and universities. Her experiences range from garden sales to interpretive park ranger, to entomologist, having researched an endemic Hawaiian damselfly and the federally endangered Karner Blue butterfly. Currently, she is working at the NJ Audubon in Cape May, adding her honed field skills to the Monarch Monitoring Project. She has decided to pursue entomology conservation, specifically butterflies, and is currently researching Master’s degree programs.
KATHY HIXSONHawkwatch Interpretive Naturalist
Kathy joins us at CMBO after spending the summer as a field technician in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. Although she was studying amphibians, she spent much of her summer marveling at western birds and is ecstatic to now call bird-watching her job. Kathy is a native of the Appalachian mountains of southwestern Virginia and graduated this past May from Virginia Tech with a B.S. in Wildlife Science. Having spent most of her spare time during college searching for salamanders on rainy nights, maintaining remote sensor cameras for a bobcat study, and banding passerines, she looks forward to going back to school and diving headfirst into some graduate research. For now, she is excited to have the opportunity to witness the amazing hawk migration at Cape May.
TOM JOHNSON
Morning Flight CounterTom has been watching and learning about birds since childhood. More recently, he has also enjoyed photographing birds, writing about birds, counting birds, and traveling to see birds, but he won't rule
out dinners by candlelight or long walks on the beach. Road trips across North America and southern South America were important in fueling his interest, and field research on owls, swallows, shorebirds, and gulls has helped focus his passion with a hint of science. In the future, Tom would like to work in a capacity to promote conservation both in North America and further afield.
TIFFANY KERSTENGeorge Meyers Field Naturalist
Tiffany first got hooked on birds at age 12, after participating in a birding class and being led to a field full of Sandhill Cranes calling and doing their mating dance. She comes from Kaukauna, Wisconsin, earning a B.S. in Natural Resources from Northland College in 2010. After a four year stint with the US Forest Service conducting various bird surveys, and three years censusing waterfowl for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Tiffany spent last fall here as a HawkWatch Interpretive Naturalist, and returns this fall as the George Meyers Field Naturalist. In the interim she has spent the winter conducting Honeycreeper research in Hawaii, and the spring and summer monitoring shorebirds on Cape Cod, Ma. She is also working towards a certificate in Supervisory Leadership, as she hopes to one day become the director of a nature center or bird observatory.
TOM MAGARIAN
Swing Counter
You may remember Tom from the hawkwatch, as he was the primary counter from 2004-2006. He returns this season as the swing counter, dividing his time equally between the Swarovski Hawkwatch, Morning Flight and Seawatch. Tom grew up in the sticks of central New York State where his interest in birds and nature were just a part of growing up. He earned a BS in wildlife biology from Unity College, Maine in 2002. After the 2006 season he spent most of the next year in Arizona working on several research projects and moved back to Cape May for the winter. In the spring of 2008 he was hired by New Jersey Audubon as a research associate, conducting avian radar studies in Lowville, NY; Block Island, RI and, most recently, Monhegan Island, ME. Tom was also part of a NJ Audubon research expedition to South America to collect data toward the conservation of Semipalmated Sandpipers. He looks forward to seeing old and new faces at the fall counts this season.
Monarch Migration Project Intern
Victoria - Tori to her friends - graduated from Lafayette College (Easton, PA) in May 2011 with a degree focusing on ecology and environmental science. She is very interested in monarch biology, conservation, and education. Monarchs were the subject of her undergraduate research and honors thesis! Since graduation, she has worked in a drug testing facility as well as teaching swim lessons in Pennsylvania. She is very excited to be working on the Monarch Monitoring Project this season and looks forward to learning more about theses amazing butterflies! *Fingers Crossed for a Cape May recovery in Mexico!*
Seawatch Counter
Tom Reed is the Primary Seawatch Counter for the 2011 season. A familiar face in the New Jersey birding community, he is a fixture in Cape May and a sixth-generation area resident. Tom volunteers as one of CMBO’s Associate Naturalists, is a member of CMBO’s World Series of Birding team, and contributes to BirdCapeMay.org. He has conducted extensive fieldwork throughout southern New Jersey on behalf of several organizations and government agencies, has written for various birding publications, and is the founder of the Mizpah Christmas Bird Count. Tom recently graduated from Rutgers University and holds a B.S. in Environmental Policy, Institutions & Behavior.
LAUREN RICHARDHawkwatch Interpretive Naturalist
Lauren grew up in Vermont and graduated in May 2010 from beautiful Paul Smith's College in the Adirondacks. While earning bachelors of science degrees in biology and wildlife, she enjoyed working on various sustainability-related projects. She has always had a great love of the natural world, and more recently of birds in particular. Lauren was fortunate to have an 'Adirondack Raptors' class at her college, and so it began! There, she grew in awe of nature's feathered beauties, and learned about Cape May's significance as a migratory hotspot and "Bird Mecca". She is honored to be here for the season. After living her whole life inland, she aspires to finally learn some shorebirds! Thankfully, Cape May's hawkwatch is a place you can't be without learning. Lauren is now beginning to pursue a graduate degree so she can do more to conserve the habitat of all the world's creatures.
MELISSA ROACH
Hawk Counter
Returning for a fourth season after spending last fall as Hawk Counter and the previous two as Hawk Watch Interpretive Naturalist for CMBO, Melissa feels like a fixture here. Earning her B.S. in biology from Lynchburg College, Virginia in 2008, Melissa has always had a strong passion for the environment and its study. Although her undergraduate research focused on the fishing spider Dolomedes scriptus, Melissa has an ever-increasing appetite to explore the field of ornithology. In spring and summer 2010, Melissa helped conduct Golden-winged Warbler field research in West Virginia and spent this past spring and summer in beautiful Missouri, conducting an extensive nest-searching and monitoring study with a graduate student.
Returning for a fourth season after spending last fall as Hawk Counter and the previous two as Hawk Watch Interpretive Naturalist for CMBO, Melissa feels like a fixture here. Earning her B.S. in biology from Lynchburg College, Virginia in 2008, Melissa has always had a strong passion for the environment and its study. Although her undergraduate research focused on the fishing spider Dolomedes scriptus, Melissa has an ever-increasing appetite to explore the field of ornithology. In spring and summer 2010, Melissa helped conduct Golden-winged Warbler field research in West Virginia and spent this past spring and summer in beautiful Missouri, conducting an extensive nest-searching and monitoring study with a graduate student.
This Clay-colored Sparrow was an exceptional treat on a day when virtually no hawks were moving through as it foraged with an Indigo Bunting just a few feet away from the platform (photo by Tom Johnson).
There have been at least 3 Gull-billed Terns foraging over Bunker Pond the past few days snatching up dragonflies at the water's edge, and have fittingly been nicknamed Dragonslayers (courtesy of Tom Johnson) (photo by Tom Johnson).
In case you haven't heard, Swarovski is the new Hawk Watch sponsor this year. They have provided the platform with some amazing optics that are free for anyone to try so stop by and check them out.
