Dr. Erica Nol

Although interested in animal behavior since my teens, I did not really become aware of the kick that bird watching provides until university, when I started bird watching in the forests of Michigan's Upper Peninsula during a summer session of the School of Natural Resources at the University of Michigan. I then spent one year in redwood forests and coastal habitats of Northern California at Humboldt State University where I would spend many hours away from my studies trying to identify the huge flocks of shorebirds in Humboldt Bay. I also participated in a few surveys of Varied Thrushes with folks trying to save the old-growth redwoods from logging. After returning to Michigan to complete my degree in Wildlife Biology I worked for a summer and winter at Long Point Bird Observatory where I worked with Ricky Dunn on Black Terns, helped David Hussell with Tree Swallows, and participated in the Migration Monitoring program. I also helped with an analysis of the migration monitoring data, which led to results indicating that young and old birds exhibit different migratory behavior as they move through the Long Point area. Spending a winter with Ricky and Dave discussing issues in academic ornithology really turned me on to the idea of spending my life doing research on birds. After a stint doing bird surveys for a consulting company, and shorebird banding at James Bay (with Guy Morrison of the C.W.S.) I went to the University of Guelph and completed an M.Sc. on the Biology of Killdeers, which I studied on the shores of Long Point, based out of the Breakwater cabin. I then worked for another year on Black Guillemots and other seabirds in New Brunswick, and Ring-billed Gulls on the Leslie Street Spit in Toronto. I then started my Ph.D. at the University of Toronto on the reproductive biology of oystercatchers in Virginia and Argentina. After completion, I went to the University of British Columbia for a few years where I studied Song Sparrows, Japanese Quail, Killdeer and Snipe, before returning to Ontario to my present position as a faculty member of the Biology Department at Trent University in Peterborough. I now am conducting a long-term study on the biology of the Semipalmated Plover in Churchill, Manitoba. I also study, with some excellent graduate students, the biology of forest breeding birds impacted by forest practises and fragmentation. In 1997 I began a collaboration with a former student (Grant Gilchrist) on the biology of shorebirds in East Bay, Southampton Island, Nunavat. I continue to be excited by the activities of the Long Point Bird Observatory.