Megan Massa

Join me for the Vermont Center for Ecostudies’ 20th Annual Birdathon, a beloved tradition that raises funds for VCE, a wildlife research and conservation nonprofit based in White River Junction.

This birdathon is like a walk-a-thon, but instead of counting miles, I’ll be doing a "birding big day", counting all bird species seen and heard during one 24-hour period in May. My coworkers and I will scurry around identifying birds during peak spring migration, where anything could show up!

You can help VCE reach our fundraising goal by either making a donation or by pledging to give a specific dollar amount per species I see with my team, the Green Mountain Goatsuckers, on our birding day.

Your generosity funds everything we do at VCE, including: 

Long-term monitoring: decades-long datasets reveal how wildlife responds to changing lands and climate. Most of the work I do at VCE involves digitizing old datasets and making them available to the public!

Innovative conservation science: pioneering studies build knowledge to protect biodiversity. Loons, bees, butterflies, plants, songbirds, and more.

International collaboration: partnerships in the Caribbean foster local capacity to sustain ecosystems. Our partnerships started with the protection of Bicknell's Thrush in the Dominican Republic but have expanded far beyond.

Mentorship for the next generation: interns and graduate students gain career skills while collecting vital data. And I love to teach good coding and spatial analysis practices.

To learn more about VCE visit vtecostudies.org. I guarantee you'll learn something new!

You can make a donation or a per-species pledge on my individual page by clicking the donate button above, or a donation to my team by going to our team page. You can also mail a check to Vermont Center for Ecostudies at PO Box 420, Norwich, VT 05055 and include my name on the memo line.