As a rising Junior, Jessica braved the waters of the Barro Colorado Nature Monument with Josh and Christie during the 2024 field season. Jessica contributed to our regular nest monitoring and surveying and assisted with our cognition experiment. She loved Panama so much that she then participated in Princeton's Semester in the Field - Panama program during Spring '25. 

Paige worked with Qwahn on her senior thesis, completing 6 weeks of fieldwork in the Dominican Republic and attending the BirdsCaribbean meeting in Santo Domingo. Paige undertook a fascinating study to characterize and quantify the vocal repertoire of one of the world's most fascinating birds: the Palmchat!

Sarah helped with data collection for a new project on Greater Ani cognition and had the privilege of seeing firsthand one of the lowest years of productivity ever in our study population, thanks to it being an exceptionally dry year. Sarah wrote her senior thesis around understanding what factors influence the timing of laying in Greater Anis.

Dr. Maria Smith, Princeton G '23

Maria, Christie's second grad student, led some awesome fieldwork on Greater Anis as part of her dissertation work. She is now the Managing Editor for the Birds of the World project at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology!

Tom Lacerda

Major Tom has an extensive knowledge of survival skills, especially those used by various military outfits, and an impressive botanical knowledge. Tom went on to work with the Great Basin Institute and Nevada Conservation Corps as a fall restoration crew member and later held Summer Teaching and Field Instructor internships with the Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park. 

Amber Wichtendahl

Amber has an impressive botanical knowledge and great experience with radio-tracking wild birds. After Proyecto Carpintero, Amber accepted a position with NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service, North Pacific Groundfish Observer Program.

Spencer Schubert (photo courtesy H. M. Garrod)

Spencer loves psittacines and has a general interest in cavity-nesting birds, using his experience with technical tree-climbing and wild-bird monitoring to work on both. After Proyecto Carpintero, he went to work on various projects and eventually earned his Ph.D. at Old Dominion University, advised by Eric Walters, and is now a postdoc at  UC Santa Cruz

Holly Garrod

Holly has extensive experience and training in mist-net operation and the banding and processing of birds. In fact, she convinced Josh he should pay attention to molts and molt limits! Holly went on to work for and run loads of different banding operations and earned her M.S. at Villanova University (with Bob Curry) studying Hispaniola's two endemic tody species. Holly currently works with BirdsCaribbean.