Student puts his love for ecology, birds and snakes to work on campus

Jonathan Scholtens might be the only graduand who’s checking every window at the FirstOntario Concert Hall while heading inside for convocation.   

He can’t help himself – Jonathan’s part of a project on campus that aims to save birds one window at a time. With nearly 60 university buildings, there are a whole lot of windows. And with the Cootes Paradise sanctuary running along the northern edge of the campus, there are a whole lot of birds flying out of the woods and through campus.  The campus is beautiful for people but it’s a fragmented and potentially lethal habitat for birds. 

According to Environment and Climate Change Canada, preventable window collisions kill anywhere from 16 to 42 million birds a year – in the U.S., collisions kill upwards of 988 million birds annually.  

Right now, McMaster’s bird strike project is being carried out by Jonathan and the other three students who work for Nature@McMaster.  They walk around every building once a week during peak bird migration season in the spring and fall and then every other week for the rest of the year. Jonathan found a chipping sparrow at the first building he walked around during his first check for bird strikes.  

The Nature@McMaster team is looking to enlist extra help. A form’s being added to the Nature@McMaster site for students, faculty and staff who find dead birds on campus – photos plus date, time and location can also be emailed to nature@mcmaster.ca. That information will prioritize what buildings to focus on first – at the top of the list is the John Hodgins Engineering Building which currently has the most recorded bird strikes over the past two years. 

Bird-saving measures include turning off lights at night in unoccupied parts of buildings and putting a film of tightly spaced dots on the outside of windows – Jonathan says dots put between panes of glass don’t work because they disappear when sunlight hits at specific angles. 

Jonathan joined Nature@McMaster as a restoration and stewardship coordinator during his second year of undergrad. He’d gone to a meeting to explore co-op options and left instead with the contact information for coordinator Wayne Terryberry who’d just secured funding to hire a team of Nature@McMaster students. Wayne offered one of the spots to Jonathan and he’s been working full-time through the summers and part-time during the school year ever since.  

Created through the President’s Advisory Committee on Natural Lands, Nature@McMaster assists with the land management of natural areas on university property.  

The Nature@McMaster student team has a real passion for ecology and sustainability, says Wayne Terryberry, the program’s outdoor recreation and natural lands coordinator.  “Jonathan has been a team leader since he began with our program and has become a campus expert on all university flora and fauna. He’s a wonderful mentor for our staff and volunteers on all things nature.” 

That love of nature and passion for ecology can be traced back to Jonathan’s parents. They would take the entire family on hikes and camping trips before their kids were even old enough to walk. Jonathan’s older brother got the entire family involved in birding – Jonathan’s more into reptiles so he’s happy that Nature@McMaster is also part of a provincial snake research project. There are two sites on McMaster property where they’re keeping tabs on snakes – just like birds and windows, there are a whole lot on campus. “Perfectly harmless snakes,” says Jonathan.  

Along with organizing hikes around campus, carrying out stewardship projects and delivering classroom and outdoor learning programming, the Nature@McMaster crew also spend their days ridding the campus of invasive species like European buckthorn and garlic mustard – plants that look good but wreck havoc on the local ecosystem. They’re also monitoring the spread of new invasive species like Hemlock woolly adelgid – it’s?an aphid-like insect that’s infested the Sassafras Point Trail. Jonathan recommends leaving your dog at home and running a lint roller over your clothes once you’ve returned home from walking the trail. 

Even though it looks like yet another day of rain, Jonathan can’t wait to head back outside and get to work. “This has been my dream job from day one.” While he graduates next week with his bachelor’s in environmental science, Jonathan is staying on with Nature@McMaster until the end of December. He hopes his three years with the program, combined with his Mac degree, will launch a dream career in ecology and habitat restoration.