HWS News
29 January 2025 • Alums • Service Protecting Historic Bird Colonies By Sydney Herbruck '25
For decades, HWS has been sending students to Maine through Project Puffin, continuing the work to preserve historic tern colonies.
Every summer, Hobart and William Smith sends one to two students to the Gulf of Maine to conduct research and learn about bird conversation under the Audubon Seabird Restoration Program.
This year, Maneula Taff-Freire '27 and Kendal Wilcox '27 joined the nearly 20 students who have participated.
Project Puffin, initiated in 1973, is an effort to teach undergraduate students the importance of restoring birds to their historic nesting islands in the Gulf of Maine. The project began with an attempt to only restore Atlantic Puffins to their natural habitat but has since expanded to multiple other seabirds such as the Common Tern and the Roseate Tern.
Since 2005, Mark Deutschlander, Professor of Biology at Hobart and William Smith, has facilitated the 12-week excursion with the Audubon Seabird Restoration Program to the Gulf of Maine every summer, in which students, mainly rising sophomores, have the opportunity to work under an Island Supervisor and participate in all aspects of seabird management. This entails conducting population censuses, monitoring productivity and growth, conducting diet studies and banding and resighting birds.
Wilcox, a biology and environmental science double major, who transferred to HWS this fall from Wells College, interned with Project Puffin this past summer. Her responsibilities involved “assisting the researchers in collecting data, monitoring the colonies and scaring away predators,” says Wilcox. She says they “spent hours each day watching the feeding patterns and measuring the wing and weight growth of the chicks,” skills that she now uses to consider herself a birder.
Wilcox also says that she learned how to adjust to life on the island with no running water and no electricity while sleeping in a tent, and that the experience has taught her a lot about field work and the different behaviors of birds.
Over the years, many students have gone on to impactful careers after participating in Project Puffin. Deutschlander says fellow biology majors who participated have explored a range of careers across the country such as Keri Geiser '16, a Field Experience Coordinator at Ecology Project International in Missoula, Mont.; Samuel Georgian '10, a Marine Biogeographer at the Marine Conservation Institute in Seattle, Wash. and Lisa White '05, an Aquaculture Program and Outreach Coordinator at Maine Department of Marine Resources in Augusta, Maine.
Other students who participated and went on to work in education include Natalie Booth '18, the Youth Engagement Manager at the Scott Family Amazeum in Bentonville, Ark.; Madison Sutton '17, a Ph.D candidate in biological sciences at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wis. and Max Feldman '15, a teacher at Martha's Vineyard Public Charter School in West Tisbury, Mass.
Emily Runnells ’08, a graduate student at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, says the experience changed her life and thanked Deutschlander for encouraging her to apply. “The internship with Project Puffin opened my eyes to seabird science and inspired me to pursue a career in marine ornithology,” says Runnells. She currently studies alcids - the bird family that Atlantic Puffins are part of - for her doctorate degree.
Top: Scientists from the Audubon Society’s Project Puffin and HWS students take a census on Jenny Island, Maine, counting the number of nests and eggs, along with identifying the species.
