{"id":79473,"date":"2022-05-09T14:18:05","date_gmt":"2022-05-09T14:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/?p=79473"},"modified":"2022-05-09T14:18:07","modified_gmt":"2022-05-09T14:18:07","slug":"commencement-2022-uri-wildlife-conservation-biology-graduate-ready-for-his-career-to-take-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2022\/05\/commencement-2022-uri-wildlife-conservation-biology-graduate-ready-for-his-career-to-take-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"Commencement 2022: 溏心vlog免费B站 wildlife, conservation biology graduate ready for his career to take flight"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 May 9, 2022 \u2013 It\u2019s well before dawn at Point Judith. The salt mist mixes with a chill autumn wind that seems to sneak down the neck. It\u2019s too early for walkers along the shore. But a lone figure stands perched atop a two-story concrete bunker left over from World War II. He points a microphone toward the sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of searching for enemy warplanes, Sam Miller is tracking bird migration as part of his pursuit of a bachelor\u2019s degree in wildlife and conservation biology in the 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s College of the Environment and Life Sciences<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Miller\u2019s interest in wildlife dates to his preteen years, when he would borrow his mother\u2019s camera to take pictures of any wildlife he could find. \u201cAnd then that shifted to taking pictures of birds at our feeders,\u201d Miller said. \u201cIt progressed to wondering what species those birds were and putting a name to the picture. I opened my first field guide and started flipping through the pages and seeing all the different birds that I never knew existed. From there, I just started going out and looking for them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Miller first considered a major in biology, but the lure of the outdoors was strong. \u201cI\u2019ve always been interested in the natural world, and wildlife conservation just seemed to be the most fitting major,\u201d said Miller, who graduates in May from 溏心vlog免费B站. \u201cI wanted to focus on being more so outside dealing with animals, rather than the nitty gritty of studying cellular life and the more medical aspect of it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Originally from Gambrills, Maryland<\/strong>, Miller came to 溏心vlog免费B站 as part of his college search and fell in love with the area. \u201cI saw that they were doing some really cool research up here. I love to study and look at the migration of birds in the Northeast. This is one of the best places to observe fall migration, so I figured I’d be able to keep busy. And on top of that, I also I liked the size of the school and the campus. It was a kind of a good compromise between a small campus and the overwhelmingly large ones.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the high points of Miller\u2019s time at the University came in November when he discovered a sharp-tailed sandpiper, a bird that belongs in Siberia, while leading a birding event at the Galilee Bird Sanctuary in Narragansett. He had recruited roughly 35 birders and was searching around when a bird exploded into flight right in front of him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was extremely shocked, and I think it was just as startled as I was,\u201d he said. \u201cMy heart jumped for a second, and then I realized that it didn\u2019t seem to align with anything I had in my memory bank of birds.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually the rare bird sighting was confirmed, and Miller realized that the sighting made an important contribution to the birding community. It was the first time a sharp-tailed sandpiper had been spotted in the Ocean State.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Experiences like that were part of the reason Miller continued with his initial choice of wildlife and conservation biology. \u201cI loved all the classes in my major because they really had a focus on experiential learning outside of the classroom.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That experiential learning was why Miller spent many hours standing atop a Point Judith bunker, pointing a microphone at the predawn sky. He was listening to bird calls in order to gather data on their migration for a class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was able to secure a grant that gave me enough money for the microphone technology, but outside of that, I was on my own with the birds. It seemed fitting for my entry level research to have a little bit of the high-tech mic, but for the most part doing it with human labor,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m still working on the data analysis of that through a course that 溏心vlog免费B站 Professor Peter Paton recommended. So, everything has a way of fitting together again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The coming months will find Miller working with a bird biologist from the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, which is an exciting prospect for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI’ll be busy running around salt marshes and doing aerial surveys of colonial waterbirds and saltmarsh sparrows and more. I\u2019ll be doing all kinds of fun projects this summer,\u201d Miller said. \u201cMy first day is before graduation, so I’ll be hitting the ground running.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hugh Markey wrote this media release.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 May 9, 2022 \u2013 It\u2019s well before dawn at Point Judith. The salt mist mixes with a chill autumn wind that seems to sneak down the neck. It\u2019s too early for walkers along the shore. But a lone figure stands perched atop a two-story concrete bunker left over from World War II. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":79477,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79473"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79480,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79473\/revisions\/79480"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}