CNRE undergrad research takes student from campus to the coast

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research 1:21 CNRE undergrad research takes student from campus to the coast

By:

Luke Hayes

22 Jan 2024 388

Desraeli McBride is an undergraduate research fellowship recipient in the College of Natural Resources and Environment. McBride's research work focuses on American Oystercatcher chick habitat within barrier islands along the east coast.

My name is Desraeli McBride. I study biology and wildlife conservation. I did a research experience for undergraduates. I was on the eastern shore of Virginia. I was focusing mainly on American Oystercatchers and their chick habitat selection. Basically wanted to understand which like habitats within an island are important for the chicks and how are they moving, How are they spending their time so that we can kind of understand how to manage those habitats. I was on the island just kind of like monitoring little families of birds following them around with like big scopes and regluing the tags that fell off or the parents may be plucked off. And then bringing the data back here and using RGIS to kind of like map it all out. I feel like I had kind of a random assortment of research experience before I got this position. And so it's really cool to kind of like do like one big cohesive project. Like to be able to see through from start to end. One of the best parts of CNRE is that it's so small, You get to know everybody. You get so much hands on experience. There's just so many cool professors here that are available to work with and to really learn from their careers and understand their research. It's been a really awesome program.