TCNJ

9 Prairie WINTER 2026 For Williams, the highlight was bushwhacking through the woods at the Delaware Canal State Park, where she spied a small shorebird called a lesser yellowlegs. "I was always the one going off the path, looking around corners," she says. The team logged all the birds that they saw in eBird, an online database of bird observations that helps to provide information about the ranges of species to avian biologists. They also used the app Merlin to recognize bird calls and tag birds they weren't able to see (permissible under the event rules), including a small, camouflage-savvy bird called a brown creeper. At the end of day, the team recorded 54 species (many seen on these pages), enough to win the student category of the competition. TUFTED TITMOUSE Cool class spotlight BIO 344 Avian Biology At the start of professor Luke Butler's Avian Biology course, students are issued binoculars and asked to take birding walks around campus. They learn to identify species and practice field sampling techni- ques, and are quizzed as Butler plays recordings of bird songs in class. All of these activities have been a part of Butler's class since he first designed it in 2011. But when the college launched the Campus as a Living Lab project in 2023, he formalized the bird surveys as one way to support the college's conservation efforts. Campus as a Living Lab links classwork and faculty research to the college's sustainability practices and policies. As the college has committed to limit the use of pesticides and to create more natural landscaping, NORTHERN CARDINAL "I was shocked," says Williams. The TCNJays all plan to continue birding as a hobby, finding it a welcome respite from tests and home- work. "With all our classes nowadays, we're so focused on our screens," says Italia. "Birding is a stress reliever and opportunity to get outside." That even goes for Dominguez, who is mostly interested in microbiology. "I don't typically get to connect with nature in the lab," she says. "It's nice to experience a different side of biology." Butler has seen similar transformations in students in his classes, as they awaken to the birds that have always been around them. They'll suddenly see a bird overhead — say, a common grackle — and point it out to friends and family. "It forever changes their relationship to their environment," he says. "They'll be in places they've been their whole life, and then they'll go birding in that place and see it in a whole new way." — Michael Blanding "Maybe we were inspiring others." — Shira Weiss '26 Butler seeks to make his birding assignments more extensive so that students conduct the surveys exactly the same way each year based on industry-standard protocols. That way, he and his students will start to generate a valid measure of campus bird populations each spring and determine whether campus efforts make a difference to the wildlife on campus. "We should be able to pick up small-scale effects of changing campus land use on bird populations over time," Butler says. — Kara Pothier GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLET

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