Photo © Steven and Mary Albert

NestWatchers Help Master’s Student

We extend our special thanks to NestWatchers in the Asilomar State Park nest box network who were integral to helping Amanda Preece attain her Master of Science degree. Amanda was a student at California State University, Monterey Bay, and also the coordinator of the Asilomar State Park nest box program. We recently learned of her successful degree completion, with the help of numerous volunteers who collected data and entered it into NestWatch.

Amanda is also the star of a short film created by Steven and Mary Albert for the California State Parks system. The film is a useful introduction to others seeking to start a community-based nest monitoring program on public lands. One success the video highlights is that before Amanda started the nest box program, Western Bluebirds had not nested in Asilomar State Park in over 90 years!

Congratulations, Amanda, on completing your thesis, and thanks to all NestWatchers who participated in this important collaborative project. Her thesis, entitled Associating Landscape Variables with Nesting Occupancy and Success of Songbirds Using Nest Boxes in Semi-urban Greenspaces, is freely available here.