Eco PhD Candidate Maina Handmaker Conducts Research to Protect Migratory Shorebirds
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While working on an organic farm in Maine as an undergraduate and for several years after, Maina Handmaker was drawn to the migratory birds who flocked to the adjacent Merrymeeting Bay. An undergraduate ornithology course had opened her eyes to the birds all around her, and she began observing them and asking questions, such as why the birds appeared at certain times of the year but not others, where they went, and what was needed to protect these vulnerable species.
Today, Handmaker—who originally hails from Louisville, Kentucky—is a PhD student in environmental conservation at the College of Natural Sciences, where she conducts research on the whimbrel, a long-distance migratory shorebird species whose numbers have declined by nearly half over the past three decades. Together with a network of collaborators all around the Western Hemisphere, she is studying the migratory behavior of this species and making a concrete impact on efforts to protect them.
Handmaker’s success as a scientific researcher has been rewarded with a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, and she has garnered over $20,000 in grants as a principal investigator (PI) and served as a co-PI on grants totaling more than $170,000. She was recently named a Groundbreaking Graduate Student at UMass Amherst.
Perhaps most significantly, her research directly influenced the South Carolina State Legislature’s 2024 vote permanently closing Deveaux Bank to public recreational access during the nesting and migration season for seabirds and shorebirds, including whimbrels.
“This was a revolutionary change in the public mindset about how to care for these sensitive habitats,” says Handmaker.
Collaborating to Transform Science into Conservation
Handmaker took a circuitous path to her PhD. After earning her undergraduate degree from Bowdoin College in environmental studies and visual arts in 2011, she worked in a series of farming, research, field work, community organizing, and communications roles for nearly a decade, through which her passion for protecting the natural environment only grew stronger. She began her PhD studies at the University of South Carolina in 2020, and transferred to UMass Amherst two years later when her advisor, Nathan Senner, took a job in the university’s Department of Environmental Conservation.
Handmaker checks the computer unit attached to the 20-foot-tall radio tower the researchers built on Deveaux Bank to detect signals from the GPS transmitters placed on whimbrels. The computer and antenna constantly scanned for signals from tagged birds, and automatically downloaded all the data stored in the tags, making it possible to reduce disturbance to whimbrels and other birds that use the island for safety at night.
This diverse foundation—and the many productive collaborations in which Handmaker took part—have strongly influenced her approach to scientific research today.
“It’s so important to work collaboratively when designing research questions with a team of people who will be responsible for turning the science into management and conservation action,” she says. “We want to ensure we’re not causing a burden on these birds without a clear goal in mind for how we’re going to use the data to try to protect their species.”
In addition, Handmaker’s distinctive background in visual arts and science communications has made her adept at building public support for conservation through compelling outreach efforts. She has given nine formal presentations on her research over the course of her PhD, and she won the Best Student Oral Presentation Award at the centennial meeting of the Association of Field Ornithologists. Her work has been spotlighted in an op-ed in The New York Times, a feature on CBS News Sunday Morning, and stories in numerous regional media outlets. She also co-created an enthralling story map that illustrates—through pictures, videos, and maps—the amazing migration journey of three individual whimbrels and the network of people across the hemisphere who are working to study and protect this species.
"I do this work to protect these amazing bird species that bring so much awe and beauty into our world. I think we need that more than ever."
— Maina Handmaker
Revising Understanding of Migratory Bird Behavior
Whimbrels make an unfathomably long journey every year from their breeding grounds in the Arctic to the northern coast of South America, stopping for a whole month in the southeast United States to refuel along the way. Their behavior during this stopover in South Carolina is the focus of Handmaker’s research.
“It’s an immense privilege and a huge responsibility to catch and handle these birds, and ask them to collect data for us,” says Handmaker. Collecting these data requires attaching to whimbrels small, solar-powered GPS transmitters capable of capturing GPS coordinates every 10 minutes, accurate within 10 meters.
“The technology has improved so rapidly that these GPS devices allow us to not only track the birds’ location, but to really zoom in and understand their specific behaviors,” she explains. “For example, what habitats are they using during the day versus the night? Which habitats are they using for foraging versus resting? What proportion of their day are they spending on each of these activities? We have made some amazing discoveries thanks to the tracking data.”
Handmaker and her collaborators discovered that the 20,000 whimbrels who slept on the same tiny island at night actually spread out during the day across the vast expanse of salt marsh habitat on the coast of South Carolina. They demonstrated, for the first time, that individual birds return to the exact same feeding territory—within about a kilometer—every day of the season, as well as year after year. The first chapter of Handmaker’s dissertation, describing this amazing discovery, was published as the cover article in the journal Ornithology.
“Maina’s research is completely revising how ornithologists think about the structure of migratory bird annual cycles and the importance of roost sites,” remarks Senner.
A Supportive Research Community
Beyond her invaluable partnerships with conservation managers and practitioners, Handmaker credits the supportive community in the Senner Lab for her success.
“Though we’re all working on different projects, the community in the lab is so incredible. Whether it’s texting each other at 2 a.m. after we get off the water or out of the bog, or brainstorming and troubleshooting coding and data analysis problems together, I’m extraordinarily grateful to all my labmates for being amazing cheerleaders and giving me such a strong community.”
Moreover, she says, Senner has been a powerful advocate for all the students in the lab, involving them in collaborations and entrusting them to take on independent leadership roles.
“The confidence [Senner] has shown in me, really treating me as a peer researcher, has made all the difference in helping to transform me into the scientist I’m trying to be as I finish my PhD,” says Handmaker.
Meet more Groundbreaking Graduate Students.
This story was originally published by the UMass News Office. Images courtesy of Andy Johnson / Cornell Lab of Ornithology, except where otherwise noted.