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This summer, on days off from her job as a veterinary assistant, Amelia studied bird populations at Warbler Ridge Preserve, a section of the Pine Mountain Wilderness Corridor conservation area managed by Kentucky Natural Lands Trust (KNLT). In order to collect data during the birds’ most vocally active time of day – morning – Amelia and Megna set up camp overnight many times in June and July. They would travel to the area the night before, drive up the steep gravel road, and set up their tents at various wooded areas nearby. Amelia liked to pack fruit for breakfast until she realized it attracted bears.

“I had never seen bears that close before. They were just a few feet away,” she recalls. The first couple of nights she was nervous about sleeping in such a wild area, but as time went on, she became accustomed to the black bears. “I realized they’re just like big raccoons,” she says.

[PHOTO: Amelia compares her foot to a bear track]

Each morning of the study, Amelia and Megna hiked from their campsites to various designated points on Warbler Ridge to get a sampling of the diverse bird species in the area. Over several weeks, they visited each site multiple times to complete what is known as an avian point-count study. Sometimes, the roar of wind rolling through the dense foliage made it too difficult to hear the bird calls, and detections for the day were limited. Other times, when the weather was cooperative, they were eager to make up for it. 

“We did 9 miles of hiking one day by accident,” Megna laughs. “You get excited going out, but then it’s like, oh no! We have to hike back now.”

Megna is an assistant professor of biology at Union, and in addition to her passion for studying birds, she is especially committed to two of Union’s core values: service and engagement. For her, this means helping students to make connections between their own interests and the world around them. It’s part of the learning process, she says, and it helps us to make meaningful choices about how we live our lives.

“I think we fall into the trap of thinking of college as the learning phase and after college as the engagement phase of a student's life,” she says. “Instead, these two are intrinsically connected.”

In addition to facilitating thoughtful discussion in her classroom, Megna highly encourages her students to get involved in research. It was an important part of her own experience as an undergraduate, and she wants to give that back as a professor. For local students like Amelia, who graduated from Knox Central High School in Barbourville, the Appalachian College Association’s (ACA) Ledford Scholars program is an excellent opportunity to get experience writing a proposal, conducting real-world research, presenting that research at an academic conference, and getting paid a stipend to do it. 

When Amelia expressed interest in applying for the grant, Megna helped her come up with a project that matched her interest in working with animals and being connected to nature. She contacted KNLT to ask permission to do the research on their land, and KNLT stewardship coordinator Derrick Lindsay was happy to partner with them. 

[PHOTO: Amelia presents her research at the 6th annual McNair-Ledford Undergraduate Research Symposium at Lee University in September.]

“The more we know what species are out there, the better we can manage the property and prepare for the future,” Lindsay says. Research like Amelia’s helps inform KNLT’s habitat restoration plans and also helps with assessing the impact of climate change. 

As it is, not many people in Eastern Kentucky study bird species in a systematic way due to lack of funding and difficulty accessing the remote landscapes. For this project, Amelia’s Ledford award provided the funding, and Warbler Ridge – a good migratory area with an established access road – provided the ideal research site. 

Amelia was completely new to birding herself, but with Megna’s guidance, she learned to identify a variety of bird calls within only two months of study between when the Ledford scholarship was announced and when the field work began. She thinks maybe growing up surrounded by musicians and learning to play guitar and bass from her father may have helped attune her ear. 

“A lot of my family members play string instruments, and nearly all of them sing, too,” Amelia says. “But what's interesting is that at our annual reunions, many of us bring our instruments and play bluegrass music!”

Megna was impressed by how fast she picked it up. “We were collecting data, no problem, right away. She could hear things before I could.”

After Amelia completed the field research, Megna taught her how to use the coding language R to analyze the data and share their findings via eBird, Cornell University’s widely used and freely accessible database. Their results indicate that Eastern Wood-Peewees and White-breasted Nuthatches are the most populous species in the area. They were able to get a sense of which species preferred which elevations, as well. 

While they lament that wind interference prevented getting as much data as they had hoped for, and they assert that more data is needed to confirm their findings, their contribution is already laying a foundation for the next phase of birding at Warbler Ridge. With climate change research, Lindsay explains, five years is the minimum length of time needed for data collection, in order to monitor what is happening over time. 

KNLT recently received a grant from Southern Conservation Partners to fund further bird studies in 2025. The dataset Amelia and Megna collected, combined with Lindsay’s own grouse survey from earlier in 2024, will start the clock on the five years of research needed. Lindsay will work with other undergraduate students in the new year to build on and add to the work he, Megna, and Amelia started, and together, they will get a fuller picture of how to continue caring for this rich ecosystem and its many residents. 

Amelia is grateful to have had this opportunity to explore wildlife research and be part of KNLT’s conservation work. Her dream is to become a veterinarian, and while she anticipates working mostly with pets, she hopes to make her services available to wildlife rescues and other organizations, as well. Her firsthand experience with bears and birds will surely help!

[PHOTO: Amelia and Megna at the research symposium]

“Amelia is a lot of fun, and she’s very intrepid,” Megna says. “That was what we needed to make the project work. Overall, except for the wind, it was a raging success!”

Amelia and Megna wish to thank KNLT for allowing them to camp and “hang out” on their property and the ACA for supporting their work. Lindsay is enthusiastic about continuing to work with student birders and other undergraduate researchers. To learn more about the Warbler Ridge Preserve and KNLT’s work “protecting, connecting, and restoring wildlands,” see knlt.org/warbler-ridge-preserve.

For more information about the Appalachian College Association and the Ledford Scholars program, see www.acaweb.org/ledford-scholars. To learn more about Libby Megna and her work, see libbymegna.com.