Exciting news from one of our youth volunteers, Zoe McCormick, who just received her acceptance letter from Cornell University, home of the prestigious Cornell Lab of Ornithology!

Since 2012, Zoe has been volunteering at the Richardson Bay Audubon Center & Sanctuary where she helps conducts bird surveys and leads monthly bird walks.  Her interest in birds started much earlier, but it flourished during her high school years and led her to us where we were able to provide some field experience.

Over the years she identified and counted thousands of waterbirds and shorebirds on Richardson Bay and Aramburu Island’s new shoreline.  In addition to field work at the Audubon Center, she took classes at College of Marin and California Academy of Science, banded birds in Yosemite with the Institute for Bird Populations, raised prize-winning chickens with 4H, and became a falconer.

Her passion for birds is broad and deep, and as a recent high school graduate she now has an opportunity to take it to the next stage.  As she wrote in her college essay:  “There is so much for me to learn!  Working with birds is my life’s calling.”

We offer our heartfelt congratulations to this young birder who is just beginning her career, and we want to sincerely thank her for all she’s done for us over the last three years.  We are certain that she will contribute significantly to bird conservation; we just feel lucky to have had a chance to meet her along her path.