Nicodemus Wilderness Project -- Global Registry of Apprentice Ecologists

My name is Cadence Richard and I am an eighteen-year-old home-school senior from Lima, Ohio. I have been involved as a volunteer with The Johnny Appleseed Metropolitan Park District since I was eight years old. I started by feeding our parks snakes, box turtles, frogs, toads, and many other critters. This involvement led to a love of caring for the natural world around me and a desire to learn more about it. Of course, as I have gotten older the level of involvement has increased as has my own knowledge. I have since taken on harder tasks such as bird banding and leading educational programs for the general public. My desire quickly became to educate those around me in order to better impact the environment. After all many hands make light work! Through my journey I have come to the realization that there are three "levels" of being an environmental steward. First you must educate yourself, second you take action by helping the environment in some way, and finally you must do your part to educate others around you. These steps were certainly applied to my 2022 Nicodemus Wilderness Project, which was geared toward helping the Eastern Bluebird.
I live in Allen County in northwest Ohio. In my area there is a wide range of habitats including wetlands, forests and prairies and a variety of life that calls them home. However, the area in which my project is focused is the meadows the Eastern Bluebirds call their home. Their preferred habitat is open meadows and fields with patchy vegetation and standing trees. This provides adequate cover from predators and plenty of potential nesting areas as well as their favorite food source, insects. My location was an open meadow with a small wooded area across the highway. One major downside to the location is that it is surrounded by farm fields which leads to the potential for contamination of the meadow by various chemicals sprayed by the farmer. It was also next to a moderately busy road leading to litter and a higher risk of being hit by cars.
The first part of my project was educating myself on bluebird monitoring. This was more difficult than one would think because I had to learn about more than just the Eastern Bluebird and their habitat. I had to learn how to properly fill out the paper work, handle and repair the boxes, learn what species to remove immediately as well how to identify beneficial species that share the boxes with the bluebirds, and other logistics of maintaining blue birdboxes. Since starting this project in 2020, I am still learning new facts about bluebirds and the other species I have come in contact with. One of the most difficult aspects to learn has been when it is appropriate to remove a nest. Some specie nests like the English House Sparrow must be destroyed and removed at once as they can cause damage to the ecosystem by killing the bluebirds and their young. The difficulty lies in determining if the nest is one that the wanted species are still building or for one reason or another abandoned. This is usually determined without the visual sighting of a bird so it is necessary to know what material each species uses as well as what type of nest they build.
The second part was to monitor the blue bird boxes and report all findings to a local land manager. Starting in April, the boxes are checked once a week through the end of August. The starting and end time for clutches vary year to year based upon the local weather. I have to note the date, time, whether there is a nest in the box, what material the nest is, and what species of bird it is. If there are young in the nest, I also have to tell how many eggs, naked young, pin feathered, fully feathered, and fledged young there are. Once all the basic information is listed for each of the six boxes, I then had to note any special notes for each box such as: repairs to the box and/ or baffle, intruders such as mice or snakes, loss or disappearance of young, and un-wanted invasive bird species. Once a bird has finished with the nest it is also my job to take out the nest and clean up after the bird so the box is ready for the next tenant. While this may seem like simply watching, the monitoring process has its own difficulties. For example, when counting the babies, I often have to pick them up to count them. This can result in being angrily chirped at or attacked by parent birds who are not too pleased at my presence. It is also necessary to know what stage of development each young is at based upon appearance in order to accurately age each clutch. All the documented information is given at the end of the season to the park's land manager in charge of the boxes. They, in turn, give the sheets to the North American Bluebird Society to keep track of how the bluebirds are doing in our area. It is amazing to know that I am apart of a conservation effort that spans across the country.
The last, but equally important, aspect of my project is to educate the public. One person cannot do everything alone, in order to make a larger impact you must get other involved. Going back to my first step, it's not safe to do something without being educated first. You could end up doing more harm than good to the environment. In past years I was able to reach smaller groups of people by giving talks to a local 4H club and creating bulletin board displays at the McElroy Environmental Education Center educating others on the Eastern Bluebird as well as conservation efforts. To that end, I created a portable display on Eastern Bluebirds in order to reach a larger audience. I have used it to teach others about the Eastern Bluebirds habitat and how they can help keep them in our area. I have had the opportunity to use the display at a large garden show held during the Allen County Fair where thousands of visitors passed by daily. I have also been contacted by the president of The Lima Area Garden Club who used the display for their Region 8 Ohio Association of Garden Clubs regional meeting. The display includes a large board that has information on the Eastern Bluebird, preserving their habitat, predators and instructions for building a bluebird box that people can take with them, as well as an example box in which I built. My hope is to educate other to take action! This may be simply leaving grassy areas as bluebird habitat, building boxes for local parks to use, or even becoming a monitor themselves. No action is insignificant action.
The Eastern Bluebird is an important part of the meadow ecosystem that make up many eastern states. However, in the 1900's Eastern Bluebirds rapidly dwindled becoming an endangered species. Thankfully, due to a rise in citizen science, between 1960 and 2019 numbers of these highly important birds were brought back up into a safe zone to where they are no longer a species of concern. Prevention is key in keeping their numbers steady. By providing this information to a national lab it allows them to see if the Eastern Bluebird is once again dwindling. Even though they are not currently endangered they could easily go back without prevention from people invested in keeping these beautiful birds around. One may think that monitoring bluebird boxes and taking notes may not benefit the community or environment in any significant way, however it is not the action of just one person that is significant, it is instead the actions of several thousand others just like me where the impact is seen. By compiling all of the data from across the country scientist are able to better track the trends of the bluebird population. Data collected can also provide information in other environmental shifts. Scientists can use the data collected in the past to see changes in migration and breeding patterns in order to make inferences on ecological changes. Bluebird conservation is an example of a grassroots successful conservation movement. The efforts in saving the bluebirds can act as a guide for saving other animal species from extinction. On a more local level bluebirds effect all aspects of the meadows in a checks and balance system. Remove the bluebird from even one area and everything from the trees to the insects are effect. In my monitoring area over the last several years there has been a large decrease in Eastern Bluebird activity. So much so that the land manager is wanting to further investigate why. Was there a change in farming practices or is there a new predator in the area? With the decline of the bluebird on my watch I have noticed an increase in European House Sparrows.
This project has taught me much about how to look at the larger picture in conservation. Even though the Eastern Bluebird appears to not need any help currently, without the boxes provided and protection from the dangers of invasive species they may not have survived. It has also taught me the importance of education and how even a small display can help provoke others to aid in ecological endeavors. I have decided that the best way to continue educating people is by going from school to school in order to start talks of conservation, citizen science and ecological impact at a young age. This has driven my decision to become a naturalist myself. I have recently been accepted at Hocking College in southern Ohio and will be perusing an associate's degree in Parks and Museum Education and a bachelors in Applied Science. While there I have a desire to work in their raptor rehabilitation center. I have no doubt I will be able to apply the skills I have learned as an Apprentice Ecologist in all my future conservation efforts. After all true conservation is not just a singular project, as seen with the Eastern Bluebird, but is instead a task passed down from generation to generation through education and action.