M.S. student Melissa Althouse recently finished up her second field season studying staging Roseate Terns on Cape Cod, MA. Melissa reports a successful field season, and shares a few highlights and photos. 
​

Melissa's work involves patiently watching mixed flocks of staging terns at several sites around Cape Cod and recording information about their behavior and their responses to potential sources of disturbance, like people, boats, and predators. Melissa's M.S. project is focused primarily on endangered Roseate Terns, but other species such as Common Terns, Least Terns, and Royal Terns (among others) stage with Roseate Terns and are part of her observations. Melissa and her field crew also resight color banded Roseate Terns as part of a larger effort to collect information about their demographics and movements. 

SUNY ESF's portion of the Roseate Tern work is part of a larger research study with partners and cooperators from the Karpanty Lab at Virginia Tech, USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, Cape Cod National Seashore, Mass Audubon, and Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge. We also owe a special thank you to the field technicians that have worked on the disturbance project- Serina Brady, Loren Gallo, Jenna Correia, and Jenna May. 

 A collaborative study among SUNY ESF, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, and New Hampshire Audubon has documented evidence on factors that limit the abundance and reproductive success of Rusty Blackbirds.   These inhabitants of the Northern Forest of North America have experienced sharp population declines in recent decades.   Timber harvest practices and predation by red squirrels have been hypothesized as causes of the decline.  Shannon Buckley Luepold, who received her M.S. in 2013, led the project which was recently published in The Condor. Dr. Cohen served on Shannon's committee and was a co-author on the study. Shannon spent two field seasons in the Maine wilderness searching for nests of this elusive species during her time at ESF. She demonstrated the importance of small conifers and low canopy closure for nest site selection, and did not find evidence that nests in harvested stands experienced reduced nest survival.   However, blackbird nests survived at a higher rate with increasing forest stand basal area, implying that pre-commercial thinning could be detrimental for Rusty Blackbird populations.  She also found red squirrels to be the most common source of nest depredation in a year following high mast production. Shannon's research has been highlighted by The Wildlife Society and BirdwatchingDaily.