A Conversation With Abbie and Sam About the Northern Arizona Motus Student Grant Program

In this episode, I chat with Abbie Brozich and Samantha (Sam) Grow, the first two recipients of the Northern Arizona Motus Student Grant Program, about their experiences with the program and how it advances their education and career goals.  As part of the Motus Student Grant Program, Abbie and Sam used the Motus Wildlife Tracking System, and other resources, to learn more about two birds that had “pinged” the Motus system in northern Arizona.  Abbie researched an American White Pelican and Sam a Flammulated Owl.  We talk about what they learned about, and from, their bird’s background and flight paths, and discuss some of the conservation efforts which may protect these species.   In addition, we talk about what the future may hold for Abbie and Sam as they graduate from NAU and begin exciting new chapters in their lives.  

https://motus.org/

https://www.northernarizonaaudubon.org/Motus-Wildlife-Tracking

https://www.audubon.org/about/welcome-flight-plan

https://northernarizonaaudubon.org/motus-student-grants

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Transcript

…Welcome. This podcast is brought to you by the Northern Arizona Audubon Society, the voice for birds in Northern Arizona since nineteen seventy two1972. We envision a future in which birds are thriving in Northern Arizona and throughout the world. Visit our website to learn more about this dynamic organization and the work it does for the love of birds and nature, especially in our part of the world…

Hi. My name is Matt Anderson, and welcome to what promises to be an interesting and inspiring episode of Northern Wings. I'm excited to have with me the first two recipients of the Northern Arizona MOTUS student grant program, Abby Brozich and Samantha Sam Grow. Abby is a student at NAU who's been pursuing her love of birds since she was twelve. Born and raised in Arizona, she grew up learning about the wonderful biodiversity the state has to offer.

She started working with birds through a rescue and rehabilitation facility, caring for both native and exotic species, and moved on to help conduct bird surveys as an intern with the Arizona Department of Game and Fish. Abby is also the secretary of the Northern Arizona Audubon Society and leads bird walks for that organization…

Sam is a senior, soon to be graduating, at NAU majoring in ecology and evolutionary biology. Her interests include the evolution and conservation of birds, particularly birds of prey. Sam, you've used your time at NAU well. In addition to your academic and bird related accomplishments, you are a member of the NAU Lumberjack Marching Band, the first college band from Arizona ever selected to perform at the Macy's Day Parade. Welcome to you both.

There is so much I'm looking forward to discussing with you. Thanks for being here. Before we talk about your accomplishments with the student grant program, tell us a little more about how your interest in Burd started and has evolved to this point. Who wants to go first? I'll start.

Um Thanks, Abby. Yeah. Of course. My interest started pretty young at about fifth grade. And to be honest, I was just bored.

And I was looking for games on my phone, and I actually found the Audubon app. So this all started with Audubon. And I found that I could take pictures of birds and they had their own little social media function on their app and it just looked like fun. And it kind of started from there. And then I kind of talked to my dad about it and he really supported it and was telling me how interesting it was so that also kind of fueled it.

And then over time, I just became the weird bird kid in school…

 and then yeah, I guess like middle school, I kind of converted one of my other friends also to, like, birds. And together, I think we kind of boosted each other in our birding endeavors all the way through high school. So That's fantastic. Yeah. Yeah.

And then at NAU, you've been…

Yeah. Yeah. And NAU, it definitely just, like, totally took off from there,  because got to meet a lot of people that I already knew online, but were great birders in the state, and they really helped me learn. And, yeah, just took it to a whole another level. I learned so much here at NAU.

And I think that may be one of the Northern Arizona Audubon Society's bird walks was the first time I met you. were leading or co leading one of the walks and I remember you being able to pick out birds and birds songs way way off in the distant. It was really remarkable thing that impressed me immediately and so fun to be able to be talking to you now about that. Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah. That was a time when I first got introduced to Kaye. And again,  my friend John Wilson who was really involved with Audubon and was leading trips,  kind of got me in on that activity as well. So I was learning from him when I met you on how to lead walks myself, which now I get to do independently. Yeah.

And how about you, Sam? So,  I was a dinosaur kid at first… from like kindergarten into early elementary school, I absolutely loved dinosaurs. Like, everywhere I went, I had a dinosaur book. I kid you not. But then when I moved to New Mexico, I started to develop bird interest, especially from my grandpa because at his house, my grandparents' house, they had a little area where there was a bird feeder and like a juniper tree. And I just loved watching the birds go to and from the feeder.

And that's how I…started practicing like IDing,  birds and stuff like that. And I was also a bird kid,  like middle school through high school. I was called a bird nerd a lot. And now I take that as a compliment. That's actually my secret nickname.

Well, it's not so much a secret. And then when I came here to NAU, like with Abby, it really took off because I met her and John my sophomore year. And ever since then, my bird IDing skills have been improved. I can now identify more birds via song. Now…

I I'm really, like, thankful for, like, all of these opportunities. And now I'm a lot closer with Audubon Society and it's it's been great. Yeah. Yeah. You you both have really surrounded yourself with some really inspirational helpful people in terms of your birding education.

And, Sam, you just shared with me a little bit ago that you've got a friend in town who wants to go owling tonight. Yeah. So what a great group to be around. Yeah. Now let's take a moment to set the stage regarding the MOTUS student grant program.

Can you tell us a little bit more about the MOTUS system? Why it can be such an important tool for research and conservation and where MOTUS receivers are located in Northern Arizona…

Yeah.  first, I just wanna say that the beauty of it is that we have so many different people across all of, you know, North and South America, and I think even some in Europe and other countries as well. And it's basically just this really large network of towers that will ping birds that fly past them within a certain distance that are wearing these little MOTUS tags. So it's different than satellite tags where instead of getting the entire track, you just get them as they fly past these towers. But it only works when you have enough towers placed so that's where the beauty of the the cooperation and just everyone putting all these towers across countries forming like kind of artificial fence lines even just to make sure that there's no gaps that birds can fly through and miss these towers.

 so it's just a really cool project. And we've got two towers here in Northern Arizona. Yeah. So Northern Arizona Audubon Society has actually put up two towers in Northern Arizona. The first one is on Anderson Mesa in Flagstaff. And then we also have one down on Trace Bruce's Ranch down in Camp Verde. So, between we've actually been able to ping a lot of cool birds. Very nice. Yeah.

And as I understand it, one of the strengths of the Moda system is that it allows you to track an individual bird across its entire range. And so that was basically the the dataset from which you mined research for your projects, which we'll talk about in just a sec. Now this is the pilot year of the MOTUS student grant program, which is phase two of a much larger initiative of the Northern Arizona Audubon Society called Wings Across Borders, Tracking Wildlife Connecting Cultures. Phase one was the installation of the MOTUS Towers in Northern Arizona that you just described, Abby. This exciting initiative was inspired by the National Audubon Society's strategic plan called flight plan, which focuses on protecting birds and their habitats through a hemispheric approach.

To that end, and this is really so exciting, the Northern Arizona Audubon Society partnered with OATL, a program within the Mexican NGO, Chicatana, which shares a similar mission to develop and showcase the research and conservation skills of students. Specifically, the Motus student grant program was designed to empower students to understand the power of conservation science, to build research capacity in local and regional communities, to foster cross cultural and cross disciplinary collaboration, and to cultivate future leaders in wildlife research and conservation like you two. It's important to note that National Audubon partially funded the program which aligns with our local mission to engage people in appreciating and protecting birds in the places they need. So, Abby, Sam, you were selected to participate in the pilot of the Northern Arizona Audubon's Moda Student Grant program. And then what?

How did that whole thing evolve? Well, yeah, I think it started out with Kaye kind of approaching me about it, and I thought it was a great idea. And then we were trying to think of who else to bring in on the project. And we had the flammulated owl that pinged our station. And the only person I could think of here was Sam because, you know, she just loves owls.

So I was like, this is perfect for her. We'll give her the flammulated owl. This will work amazing. Nice. Um

, yeah. And then we eventually were able to meet with Kaye and we kind of were getting the details straightened out together. So it really was just kind of a working it out as we go kind of process. But, yeah, it turned out amazing. Yeah.

What were the deliverables? What were you asked to do as part of this project? So there were three main things. The first part was to do research on our assigned birth. The second one was to do three oral presentations.

One here in Flagstaff, one over Zoom with the other students from Mexico, and then the third one down in Sedona. The third was to do research paper write up about the bird. That was like the three main goals of this paper. And also I was super excited when I got that text from Abby. Uh-huh.

Like over the summer, I was like, heck yes, please. Yeah. I think I just text you. I was like, hey, do you wanna do a presentation about an owl? And I thought That was enough.

That was pretty much all I said, and she was in. Yeah. Oh, such a great story. Well, tell us a little bit about the birds that you were selected to research and it's little bit of its history where it was tagged, those kinds of things. Now, uh

, Sam, well, you had the flammulated owl. Yes. And Abby, you had The American white pelican. American white pelican, which we've had experience with here at Kachina Wetlands in Flagstaff. Yeah.

Yeah. So tell us about that. Yeah. So I kind of wanted to choose something…that maybe wouldn't have been someone else's first pick. I wanted to leave the better birds, the more charismatic birds, I should say, to other students.

But I still wanted something that had a lot of data and would have an interesting story. So that's why I chose this one. And so why was the bird initially tagged with a MOTUS tag? Yeah. So this project was actually to look at the juveniles of Gunnison Island in Salt Lake City.

And there's really not a lot of information about what dispersal pelicans do after leaving their breeding colonies. Those first three to five years of their life is what's considered like the pre breeding sub adult population. Like they haven't entered the breeding population yet but they're still migrating, they're still doing things. So they really wanted to know what those birds were doing. So they tagged juveniles from this island in the colony before they took the first flights, and this was one of those.

Interesting. I'd never really thought that there were so many white pelicans so close to us. And Sam, your bird. So, um

, flammulated owl like you said, and we named him Frumpy. Well, technically, we didn't name him. The person who tagged him up in Montana named him Frumpy because of all the pin feathers he had and he was just…frumpy, I guess. So, yeah, he was tagged up in Montana by researcher Kate Stone. And Kate Stone is part of a organization called MPG Ranch, and the main reason why Frumpy was tagged was because they from what I learned from Kate is that they want to know more about flammulated owls, specifically up in Montana because if I remember correctly, they found a breeding population within their area and they were shocked…to find it.

So they wanted to find out more, and that's one of the reasons why Frumpy was tagged. I see. Like yeah. And Frumpy made it all the way down here to be pinged? Yes.

Wow. That's just terrific. We we are actually the furthest south he was detected. What was the research that you did to better understand this your bird and its species? Uh

, for example, contacting program managers, getting additional information, mining, MOTUS data. What kinds of things did you engage in to complete your project?  for me personally,  the biggest thing I did was just go through Google Scholar and try to find every single research paper that I could. And I really went down some rabbit holes with some of that. It was really interesting.

And there were some other things where…it was kind of there hadn't really been research done on it yet, so I had to look at some, like, birding blogs,  and other different sources and Audubon articles. But, yeah, I did also contact the main contact for the the program, the,  Utah Department of National Resources and their American white pelican tracking program. So I contacted the main person…for that, and he gave me a lot of really great info for, like, the behind the scenes process of the tagging and what they're actually looking for and a lot of those questions that they need to answer. So what were the travel patterns of your American pelican, Abby? Yeah.

My pelican really had a pretty predictable circular migration path.  When it went south, it would usually kind of go from Salt Lake City north before heading south, which a lot of young pelicans do, which I found was really interesting. They will, after the breeding, before they're actually ready to head south for the winter, they will move north first And then they'll kind of go down through California and then follow the Pacific coast down Mexico. And then on the way up, they usually just, my pelican at least, would shoot straight up from its wintering grounds off Pacific coast, and then it would go straight up through Arizona, through Utah, and it really liked the Snake River in Idaho. So it usually end up there before…just heading elsewhere. And about how far did your American Pelican travel?

When I was traveling south from the Colorado River Delta,  on the Mexico coast, it did travel,  a little over a thousand kilometers down that coastline. So at least from that section, that stretch,  from its southward journey, it was a pretty fast traveler. And it usually, on average, would be anywhere from, like, ten to twenty five kilometers per hour. It's wonderful the amount of data that gets captured in the process, isn't it? Yeah.

The charts and Motus are very helpful. You get the date of arrival, exactly how long it's been there, the speed, get the gaps between detections, and obviously the distance traveled, distance from the previous station. So you get a lot of really good information. Yeah. Wow. That's really interesting.

And just so listeners know,  we're going to post a link to the motor system, and so you can take a look and see how,  Abby's American Pelican traveled and how Sam's flaming it at all traveled and look at those individual pathways. Abby, what do you infer from these patterns about the travel? I think speed is one of the more helpful things for ensuring exactly what it was doing as well as time detected at each station. Some stations like the one here in Flagstaff, which is the reason I was studying this bird because it pinged the station. I think it was only there for, like, four seconds.

So you can kind of infer from that that it didn't stop, at least not within that station's range, and it just flew over. So there's some stations where you can tell it just flew over. There's some clusters of stations in some areas where you can see it traveling back and forth between those and spending like months there. And then there's also some stretches like my bird was detected in an Idaho in the Snake River, and then the next detection was halfway down California. And obviously, the path or at least we would assume that the path goes over Nevada, but it doesn't ping any stations there.

But because of the speed that it traveled, like, it was…

five kilometers per hour or less, and there was a long gap between those two detections, I can safely infer that it stops somewhere in that point. We just don't know where. Alright. Well, that stopping information is really important, isn't it? If we can match places where these birds stop to resources, We can optimize the resources that are available to overwintering birds or birds that are,  molting and and going through other important,  processes.

How about you, Sam? Tell me about your bird, the flammulated owl. What kind of research did you do to better understand it, and what were its travel patterns, and,  what do you infer from it? So the main two websites I looked at were birds of the world from Cornell and the MOTUS website that those are the the two main websites I got my research from. I was trying to, like, keep into the ecology and Frumpy's story.

Frumpy's flight plan was interesting because while I was looking at the data, I noticed that a lot of the stations he pinged were within, like, a short distance of where he was tagged. He spent a majority of his time up in Montana. Okay. And I thought this was really…

curious. So I contacted Kate Stone again. I contact her a lot through this process of Well, it sounds like she provided some great information. She did. Yeah.

And she pointed out that where their station was, mainly their station, which was Spike Camp, is the perfect habitat…for flammulated owls. Ponderosa pine forest. And the elevation was perfect too. So I was like, that makes sense. He would like to stay in his preferred habitat.

I mean, like, who wouldn't…who wouldn't like to stay in, like, their preferred home or habitat. Right? But like I said, he spent a majority up there. He pinged our station…in two thousand twenty five…and he went back up to Montana again, stayed around that area. Then his last detection was at a station…called Spring Valley Huntsman Ranch in Nevada.

And I was looking at the map, and I was like, that's kind of like desert area. Like, why would he stop there? Because we thought he stopped there. There were no other pings. But then…

and until the January thirtieth was where I found out where he was. He was in Mexico. Interesting. The other student,  who did a flammulated owl, it turns out her flammulated owl was Frumpy. Okay.

So there there's a small world story there, isn't there? They share it shared the same tag number. Right. I recognized that tag number, and I was like, holy. That's frumpy.

Yeah. We know where he went because Kaye I discussed this with Kaye, and we were like, why wouldn't he go to Mexico? Because according to the Cornell birds range map, flammulated owls like to winter down in, like, central Mexico. And we were curious as to why he just stopped in Nevada. Like, did he go back up to Montana without us noticing, or did he go someplace else?

Because it was near migration time. Because, like, it was in September when he was pinged at the Huntsman Ranch, Spring Valley Huntsman Ranch. And I was so shocked because we were like, we found him. And then the the lead of the OAMTL…

Sergio,  told us that they don't have a lot of stations down there. So he wasn't pinged. We didn't know where he was, but now we know.. And it was so exciting to find that out because it was a gap…in my research…So and I'm glad it was filled.

So that was one of the interesting surprises that you encountered along the way and were able to resolve. How about you, Abby? Did you have any surprises with your American Pelican? Yeah. My Pelican in its second year, so in twenty twenty five, made a really weird detour that…other pelicans hadn't really done.

There were a couple, but it wasn't a common practice for them. Where after spending some time in the Snake River in Idaho before moving into California, it actually went even further up and west onto…the coast of Washington. So it went all the way into the Pacific Northwest. Historically, it was really rare to see pelicans up in that area about forty years ago or so. But in recent decades, uh

, as I've seen on some birding blogs, it's actually been a much more common occurrence for people to spend their winters there. Alright. And so you get some data to back up the anecdotal reports that you've seen. 

For sure. And actually nearby in the Columbia River, there's been some new breeding colonies starting in that area as well. Oh, how exciting. So yeah. It's just it was a really weird extra journey that my bird decided to take, and it seems to be following a pattern of more and more pelicans coming to that area.

So based on what you've done with MOTUS, how do you believe MOTUS is contributing to science and conservation today…

From, like, my personal experience, MOTUS is helping us create more awareness about migratory birds and actually other species. There are some butterflies are tagged. I think creating awareness for conservation is one of the best things you can do, especially today. And the more we create awareness for conservation, I think the more we can help. And I think that's a big thing to do.

Yeah. Very nice. Do you have anything you wanna add to that, Abby? Yeah. I'd have to agree with the awareness aspect because I I do think that the MOTUS program…is possibly more charismatic than just, you know, putting satellite tags on a bird and the researchers get their information, but it's not like it just stays with them really.

The Motus is a public website. Anyone can access it. It's something that's easily advertisable. Audubon has been advertising. It's a good story that people can really look at and also I think it's just is more accessible.

It's a little more affordable. The tags are not as expensive as satellite tags. They might be lighter so easier to put on smaller things like dragon flies, bats, butterflies. So I think it's a little…

more applicable…and just easier to use. And also because it's such a well developed system and it can only grow, I think it has a really good future ahead of it. Yeah. Those are both great summaries. One of the things that I've come to appreciate about MOTUS is the fact that while you're telling stories about an individual bird and its journey, that often represents the species.

It's not flying alone. It's flying with over untagged birds, birds. And so you can infer quite a bit about a species based on the migratory patterns of a single individual. Can I add on something? Yes, please.

So…during the end of my presentation, I brought up that flammulated owl conservation is not common. I also found that out from Kate. Like, up in Montana, they don't have specific, like, conservation plans for the flammulated owl species itself. The best they have is to manage and conserve their habitats. So part of the main goal or one of the main goals of my presentation was to help create flammulated owl conservation awareness…

And I'm hoping to further in that in the future, hopefully. Okay. Well, let's expand on that a little bit. So with both of your birds, how would you propose to expand the either the conservation or the research into the species? I think one of the best starts into formulated owl conservation is to learn,  more about the species itself and how to research them because…I figured out so much stuff from Kate.

These species are really hard to find even for them, even when they had, like, mist nets up and stuff. They're hard to catch. So I think one of the best starts is to learn how to, like, properly catch them and research them. Then once you have a good amount of research data and catching data, then you can go from there. I also think that preserving their ponderosa pine habitat is also a huge part of flammulated owl conservation.

We have ponderosa pine forest down here in Arizona, so I think that conservation plan should spread to the west where flammulated owls have been spotted because as I was researching, the birds of the world and the Audubon website have mentioned that populations are stable. But then I further discussed with Kaye, and there's actually so little data on their population that we're actually not certain or their populations are in decline. And a a couple like the AZ Game and Fish Department and the Forest Service have list them as, like, species of concern, etcetera. So I definitely think that habitat, ecology research in general, and learning how to properly catch them…

and have hands on experience with them is a great is a good start. Okay. Excellent comments. How about with your American pelican, Abby? What would you do differently or similarly?

Well, when it comes to questions like what this Pelican specifically was trying to answer, I think the biggest gaps were just we need more MOTUS towers.  Like I mentioned before, it is a very well developed system, and there are a lot of different collaborators on this project, but we could always use more, especially in the West Coast compared to the East Coast United States. When my bird was traveling through Nevada after leaving the Snake River, there was a month long gap before it was pinged in California and it was moving very slowly according to the MOTUS data. So we know that it rested somewhere and filled up before moving on. There are only nine MOTUS stations in Nevada…and a good majority of those are down in the southern half and around Las Vegas.

Vegas. So…almost the entirety of that very large state that has a lot of rivers and reservoirs is just not covered. So things like that, it could really help to have more fence lines of stations or just stations in important bird areas. Fill in those data gaps. Yeah.

I think that's the biggest thing that could really help just get more answers for where birds are going as a whole. Agreed. Because like I mentioned before, they don't have a lot of motor stations down in Mexico. So maybe putting or, like, if they do happen to put more motor stations down in Mexico, we can find out where more formulated owls go in Mexico. And then I will also say for pelicans as a whole, they are listed as a species of least concern.

So there isn't too much, you know, worry about their populations declining, but they are very sensitive when it comes to breeding. So lake levels, water levels. Okay. Their most important

thing that they need is those isolated islands along rivers and lakes. Because if a

isolated islands along rivers and lakes. Because if a predator has access to a colony, they will either abandon it or they'll just lose too many chicks to those predators. For example, in twenty twenty three on Gunnison Island,  in Salt Lake City, there was actually a full abandonment of that nesting colony because the land bridge that connects that island to, you know, the mainland Utah was the water was low enough so that was connected and coyotes were seen on the island. So…birds will just leave if they don't have those isolated islands. So keeping up those water levels is very important, but also keeping up public perspective on pelicans I think, is pretty important for them.

One of the other biggest things and probably biggest rabbit holes I went down was how they interact with fishermen, and a lot of fishermen actually think that pelicans will eat all their trout, all their other sport fish. Usually, that isn't true. Sometimes it does happen, but I think that was really interesting that just making people understand that they aren't actually a threat. You don't need to go shooting pelicans Mhmm. To stop them from eating your trout in most cases.

So…

Those are all great suggestions. Do you have one more, Shann? Yeah. I have one more thing to mention. Please.

Yeah. Another thing regarding conservation for flammulated owls would have to be climate change awareness. For example, I found out about a massive death event of flammulated owls that were flying over Phoenix in September two thousand twenty four. They fell out of the sky dead mainly,  from what I've heard, mainly due to heat, exhaustion, or extreme heat. And three scientists are currently looking into it, and they're looking into all the factors.

But I think definitely…climate change is a main thing, especially for today. So those are great responses. Let let me ask you another question. How does the scholarship and how do your experiences with Northern Arizona Audubon Society advance your education and career goals…

I think this is definitely a very unique opportunity in terms of presenting and talking to people about this kind of thing. I mean, we do all kinds of research projects and classes for assignments…

like this, but actually presenting it to a Zoom or a group of people who really care about this subject, but also…

are just really interested and also could be interested in helping you in the future.  like, there's a lot of really important people at that Zoom and a lot of people that we just knew personally or professionally that we invited to watch this. It was just a really good for networking, good for just spreading the word about our really cool birds and just telling the story. A very unique opportunity to practice presenting in this way. So I think just with the experience, it really has helped prepare us for these kinds of presentations in the future.

Fantastic. I totally agree. I me personally, I need as much experience as I can with public speaking because I always get super nervous, and I stumble my words. But besides that, it was a great opportunity to actually, like, do external research from school on on a subject that I care very deeply about. Like, I am an owl nut…

I want to study owls as a future career, and the fact that I got to do this project gives me a taste of, like, what it could be like, what kind of stuff I need to look into. And it was, like Abby said, it was an amazing opportunity. Yeah. And I I have to agree. I mean actually getting to research something we care about this deeply and getting to just have fun finding things out.

It was Mhmm. Different than just an assignment. It was clear in your presentations that you really enjoyed and derived a lot of benefit and satisfaction from the process. Absolutely. Yeah.

What are the most important lessons that you learned during the process? I think one of the more interesting things that I wasn't expecting was how to tailor the story depending on the audience. Mhmm. So for like the Zoom specifically, that was more just all about the story. It was more for a broader audience, not so much about the facts, the background.

There was a bit of that too of course and that's important but just really…

emphasizing why is this important? Why do we care about this? Why is it cool and interesting? And then there were things like the,  in person flagstaff presentation where we had more time and it was definitely more scientific science based. 

 so it was cool to kind of have basically two different presentations. They were completely different from each other at least,  for my project…depending…on the time that we had and the type of people that we were presenting to and the purpose of that presentation. Okay. Yeah.  definitely going from the facts to the story was a tough one for me because, like, I struggled to find a good story for Frumpy before the January thirtieth presentation because I didn't have a lot of background info on Frumpy in general.

So I had to, again, contact Kate Stone, go deeper into the flammulated owl die off or death event. And compiling together a story was very rewarding but also, like, really tough to do. But I think it came out good in the end. Sure did. Yeah.

And I would also just like to add, like, I agree contacting someone in that manner, like, it was it was a very different reason. Like, I've never had to reach out and be like, hey. I'm researching your project. Like do you have any information for me? And just hoping that they help you out.

And and I feel like in both of our cases, like they were all very helpful people and were very eager to share which was really nice to see that. Oh, I bet they just love getting that phone call. Right? Yeah. Learning how their efforts are being explored in other parts of the country in other parts of the world.

Yeah. That's another thing is that international aspect of getting to see how, you know, the students from Mexico also tackled the same project but in their own different ways. Like, I feel like we all interpreted it differently, which I really liked. It was all four very different presentations. Even though we're all kind of talking about the same thing when I really get down to it.

Right. It was a really cool thing to see…

the different points of view from those presentations, especially the student who did the flammulated owl because I found out more information that filled my own brains. I think that was like filling in some blanks for your own. And I was like, yes. Oh, that's great. Well and it also really brought home the importance of the hemispherical approach to data collection and storytelling and conservation.

Being able to see all those pieces come together in this very cross cultural and cross disciplinary way. That was such a wonderful event to to be present for.  you both did a wonderful job on it. Thank you. Thank you.

Let's explore that even just a little bit more. What did you learn from those presentations? Not necessarily about the birds, because you just spoke to that, I think, Sam, a little bit, but about the collaborative process of conservation…

I personally really like to see how the organizations down there interacted with their communities. At the start of the Zoom, we kind of learned more about Wattle and other organizations down there that really involve their community, keep it at the local level. I mean they the book with like the students that drew the bird, I love that. Uh-huh.  I wish we did that here to be honest.

But also,  I think with like Diego's presentation specifically really talked about how the area he studied is just so understudied and there's just so much to learn in those areas. So I think it's really cool that they just have, like, this whole wilderness at their disposal basically to, like, go and learn that people haven't really properly explored yet. Well, one of the things that I thought was particularly cool was listening to you emerging conservationists talk about things with a lot of confidence, academic specificity, and passion, and to think what what are these people going to be doing in ten years. We've covered quite a bit of ground in this conversation, learning about your bird stories, why they were tagged, the challenges they faced, where their journeys took them, and why this research matters for bird conservation across borders. For those who want more information on MOTUS, I'd invite you to listen to our podcast episode on that important tool for research and education.

I've also included a link to the MOTUS program itself as well as to resources regarding the Northern Arizona and National Audubon Society's programs related to hemispheric conservation…

Abby, Sam, thank you so much for your time today, and, again, congratulations on being in the first group of MOTUS student grant recipients along with your peers in Oaxaca. A special congratulations to you, Sam, on your upcoming graduation. I'm so impressed by what you two have accomplished so far. What's next? So after graduation, I plan to take a gap semester or year depending on what happens, then go to graduate school.

I have a couple choices. I want to go to Boise State University because they have a raptor biology master's program and that I'm severely interested in. University of Montana. And then…a second choice for me is to go to school overseas. I really want to go to school in the UK to get my master's degree, and I think that would be an amazing opportunity…to, like, see how the education is there, to search for more birds Uh-huh.

That you can't see here in the US. But, yeah, I just wanna broaden my bird knowledge I see. In either way, shape, or form. Gotcha. So broadening your bird knowledge through experience, through internships, through additional, uh

, graduate education, it just sounds like some great plans. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And how about you, Evie?

 Yeah. So I kind of have a similar plan to Sam where I am graduating a semester early. So then when I take a gap year, I have a little bit of extra time. And with that time, I'd like to do just as many field jobs as possible, get as much experience as possible.  and I would love for that to be in other states or other countries and really just explore.

I I just went to Costa Rica for the first time, actually out of the country for the first time,  last week. So I'd love to just continue that and see new places and explore even more. And then after that, I would also like to go for a master's. Possibly, I'm looking at U of A, actually in the same lab as Matt Jenkins who you've talked to on this podcast. Absolutely.

How interesting.  purely by coincidence I didn't realize he was in that lab until I saw his name on there. Um

, so yeah. Kind of same just field work experience than grad school. It just sounds great. And I hope you have,  enough time to recover a little bit from all of these academic  activities that you're engaged with right now as you finish this semester off. Yeah.

It's going to feel so good to walk across that stage. Isn't it, Sam? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I'm nervous, but I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah. Savor that moment. We live in an era in which many species of birds are experiencing population declines. It's so encouraging to learn from the next generation of bird conservationists about how tracking wildlife helps connect cultures, science, and conservation across hemispheres. From what I've heard, the pilot of the Northern Arizona Motus student grant program was very successful, and I hope it continues for years to come.

As a matter of fact, the Northern Arizona Audubon Society is looking for two students for the next round of MOTUS student grants. More information about these opportunities is contained in the podcast description and on our website…

Abby and Sam, this has been so fun chatting with you today, and best wishes to you both as you continue your academic and professional journeys. Can't wait to see what you accomplish in the future. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Yeah.

Thank you. We hope you have enjoyed this podcast. Please consider joining Northern Arizona Audubon Society or your local bird group to support the work they do to help birds. And above all, we hope you will continue appreciating and protecting birds and the places they need.