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2005 Delaware Shorebird Project Participants

Below is information about the 23 members of the international Delaware Shorebird Project research team.

Allan Baker, Ph.D., Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada
Allan has been involved in research on red knot since 1995, working on their genetics, population biology and demography.

Nicholas Branson, Ph.D., England
Nick, a former radio astronomer and university administrator at Cambridge University, England, has been banding birds in the UK for over forty years, in particular with the Wash Wader Ringing Group (with published work on Black-bellied Plover and Turnstone). Now semi-retired, he has assisted with studies of shorebirds in Australia, and with research into the flight of hummingbirds in Costa Rica, before coming to Delaware bay for the first time in 2005.

Erin Conlen, Limerick, Pennsylvania
Erin has a degree from Ursinus College, and is currently a third year undergraduate student at Prescott College for Environmental Studies, Prescott, Arizona. In addition to college, she currently holds a full time job as a Project Manager in new commercial construction, looking to expand into sustainable development. She has pursued studies in Yellowstone for the past 10 years on the wolf-reintroduction program, collaring and tracking. This is her first year on the Shorebird Project.

Ruth Croger, England
Ruth has been a member of the Farlington Ringing Group (in Hampshire, southern England) since 1997 and has participated in shorebird research in Iceland, Ireland, Portugal, France and Australia. This is her first year as a volunteer with the Delaware Bay Shorebird Project (and first visit to the USA) and has enjoyed it greatly.

Veronica L. D’Amico, Ph.D. student, University of Comahue, Rio Negro, Argentina
Veronica has worked with shorebirds for eight years as member of the International Shorebirds Expeditions, organised by Dr. Allan Baker. She has also worked on feeding strategies of migrating shorebirds at Peninsula Valdes, Patagonia, Argentina.

Her Ph.D. proposal is based on the study of some health condition parameter of red knots in their wintering sites in South America, such as: parasite, pathogen and ectoparasite loads, immunity response and nutritional status. She is taking blood samples in Delaware Bay, to do analyses on immuno-competence and parasite loads of the red knots.

Amanda Dey, Ph.D., Senior Biologist, Endangered and Nongame Species Program, NJ Division of Fish and Wildlife
Mandy has worked on the Delaware Bay Shorebird Project since 2000, including field research on red knots on Arctic breeding grounds and South American wintering grounds. Mandy has worked on for the ENSP since 1993 and completed her dissertation on Neotropical migrant songbirds in January 2005.

Steve Gates, independent ecologist
Steve has worked on the shorebird project since 2001, taking part in the banding at Delaware Bay, as well as expeditions to the Arctic and Tierra del Fuego. He has also worked on a number of other NJENSP efforts, including the Bald Eagle Nesting Project and the Camden Eagle Observation Project.

Patricia Gonzalez, Wetlands Co-ordinator, Fundacion Inalafquen, Argentina
Patricia has been involved in research on red knot since 1995, doing fieldwork in Argentina, Brazil and Delaware Bay.

Clive Minton, Ph.D., Melbourne, Australia
Clive has been studying shorebirds for 55 years, especially in England and Australia, where he has lived for the last 27 years. He was part of the initial Delaware Bay Shorebird Project team in 1997 and has returned as a volunteer every year since. His particular area of expertise is catching shorebirds by cannon-netting and collecting associated data on weights and migratory movements of banded birds. Professionally, he is a metallurgist, with a career mainly in the engineering industry, and latterly in human resources.

Scott Major, New Jersey
Scott is a third-year, undergraduate student in Natural Resource Management at Rutgers University. It is his first year as a volunteer in the program.

Larry Niles, Ph.D., Chief, Endangered and Nongame Species Program, NJ Division of Fish and Wildlife
Larry has worked on the Delaware Bay shorebird stopover since 1986 and has led the Delaware Bay Shorebird Project since its beginning in 1997. Larry completed his Ph.D. on migratory raptors in 1996, and has been Chief of the Endangered and Nongame Species Program since 1991.

Sam Orr, Cape May East, New Jersey
Sam has been volunteering on the Shorebird Project for the last five years. He has been manager of the Cape May Raptor Banding Project since 1999, having been a volunteer on the project since 1994.

Jeannine Parvin, Ocean City, New Jersey
Jeannine has worked on the Delaware Bay Shorebird Project since 1998. In addition to this project she has worked with other local environmental groups doing educational outreach to both adults and children about the phenomenon of migration along the shores of Delaware Bay.

Mark Peck, Ontario, Canada
Mark Peck is a technician in the Department of Natural History at the Royal Ontario Museum. He has travelled with the knots along their migration route since 1995, visiting their staging areas in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, United States and Canada.

Bill Pitts, Wildlife Seasonal Technician, Endangered and Nongame Species Program, NJ Division of Fish and Wildlife
Bill is maintaining the Automated Radio Tracking Stations (ARTS) units that are scattered about the Delaware Bay and Hereford Inlet during this year’s shorebird migration. He has a B.S. in Biology with an Environmental Science concentration. This is his first year with the shorebird program.

Ron Porter, Environmental Engineer, Pennsylvania
Ron has been a volunteer from Philadelphia with the shorebird project since 1998, doing banding, scanning, analyzing data and inventing and building equipment.

David Price, Devon, England
David is a keen, amateur ornithologist from the UK. He has organised monthly shorebird counts in Devon for the past 25 years, and has carried out research into the distribution and movement of birds on local estuaries. He participated in expeditions to Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego and north-west Australia. His main role in this year’s Delaware Bay studies is carrying out scans of flocks to identify individually marked birds.

Inês Serrano, National Banding Office (CEMANE, IBAMA), Brazil
Inês has been involved in research on red knot since 1987, undertaking fieldwork in Brazil and Argentina as well as Delaware Bay.

Humphrey Sitters, Ph.D., Devon England
Fifteen years ago, after a previous career as a lawyer, Humphrey changed track and became an ecologist. He completed a doctoral thesis at Oxford in shorebird feeding ecology. Since 1997, Humphrey has made an annual migration to Delaware Bay to help with the shorebird studies. Now, his main involvement is an on-going project to understand how Red Knots use the Bay and the surrounding area through observations of the birds’ movements and feeding behaviour and through manual and automatic radio-tracking.

Susan Taylor, Victoria, Australia
Susan is a state-employed biologist, and has worked on shorebird monitoring programs in Australia for 15 years. This is her third consecutive season in Delaware Bay, where she assists with cannon-netting.

Dick Veitch, Auckland, New Zealand
After a 40-year career with conservation of threatened species in New Zealand, Dick now assists with work of the Invasive Species Specialist Group of the IUCN. He is involved in research work on shorebirds in NZ and a number of overseas locations, including Delaware Bay.

Barrie and Angela Watts, Oakville, Canada
Barrie and Angela have been volunteering with the Delaware Bay Shorebird Project for several years, and enjoy their time here immensely. They were introduced to the project by Angela’s brother, Clive Minton.

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Department of Environmental Protection
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Last Updated: May 31, 2005