Summer 2025 Notes from the Field

It has been another busy and fun summer of field work for Great Hollow’s conservation scientists. We kicked off our new study of how forest thinning intended to enhance habitat quality for New England cottontails also affects insects, birds, and bats. This project is being conducted at Housatonic State Forest (Sharon, CT) in partnership with researchers from the Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, University of New Hampshire, and South Dakota State University. For our part, Great Hollow’s director Dr. Chad Seewagen, research fellow Dr. Sarah Deckel, and research intern Eliza Wein have been conducting baseline surveys of plants, insects, birds, and bats for comparison to future years, after trees have been thinned to open the canopy and increase the density of the understory. Our crew also headed up to Vermont’s tallest mountain, Mount Mansfield, to continue our study of how rising temperature trends on mountaintops may affect the delicate balance among bird species that are uniquely adapted to life at high elevation. In collaboration with the Vermont Center for Eco-Studies, we successfully collected a second season of data to compare the ecology and energy needs of a high-elevation specialist, Bicknell’s thrush, and a generalist competitor, Swainson’s thrush, in relation to temperature and precipitation. Both projects have been going great so far and given us the privilege of working in some beautiful places for observing nature. Stay tuned for more.

Photos clockwise from top left: Great Hollow director Chad Seewagen setting up a bat recorder; research intern Eliza Wein using a beat-sheet and aspirator to collect insects; Eliza Wein preparing to release a banded songbird; sunrise from our field site on the summit of Mount Mansfield, Vermont (4,395′ above sea level).