With the unseasonably warm and snowless winter in the west, what is in store for our nesting raptors this spring? Our Cavity Adopting Raptor Ecology Studies (CARES) team is already finding Western Screech-Owls and American Kestrels on eggs, suggesting a busy start to the season.Â
Every season, we recruit a team of interns, a technician, and community scientists to help our full-time staff monitor hundreds of nest boxes. The 2026 CARES season is an extra special one because we hosted 27 volunteers for our first-ever in-person onboarding for our southern Arizona-based volunteers at our new Arizona hub, the Roost! We are thrilled to see how much the community science team has grown across our Utah, Idaho/Washington, and Arizona field sites. We truly could not monitor over 700 nest boxes and hundreds of nesting kestrels and screech-owls without them!
Now, let us introduce you to our 2026 team!
Doris Rodriguez, Technician
Education: B.S. in Ecology for Environmental Science from the University of North Texas
Doris comes from the sunny coast of Long Beach, California. After acquiring her degree, she quickly picked up and soared into new adventures. Her adventures include banding songbirds on the west coast, working with critically endangered seabird species on the island of Kaua’i, crashing through the dense forests of the Sierras for Spotted Owls and Goshawks, and banding raptors in the Midwestern flyway with Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory and along the Pacific Coast flyway with Golden Gate Raptor Observatory. This past fall, she spent her third migration at the Commissary Ridge HawkWatch, leading the migration forefront. This is Doris’s second season as the technician on our CARES team studying kestrels and screech-owls. In her free time, Doris ventures out on hikes, rock climbs, and photographs delightful memories. Her favorite raptor is the Rough-legged Hawk!
Aubrey Schwonek, Intern
Education: B.S. in Biology at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
This past summer, Aubrey worked with a population of Flammulated Owls in Utah for a second season as a HawkWatch International Following Forest Owls Field Technician. This is where her passion and love for birds of prey began. Aubrey also spent last fall as a Raptor Migration Crew Member at the Manzano Mountains HawkWatch in New Mexico. She most looks forward to re-sighting banded kestrels, learning to safely handle new species, and engaging with the public about raptor conservation. In her free time, Aubrey enjoys reading, crocheting, hiking, and camping.
Michaela LaPlante, Intern
Education: B.S. in Biology from Northern Arizona University and a Master’s from University College Cork in Ireland
Michaela’s love of birds deepened when she conducted American Goshawk occupancy surveys in the lovely Sierra Nevada and saw so many wild species in their old-growth forest habitat. She also banded passerines in Spain during the spring migration and conducted an owl distribution survey.
Michaela returned to her AZ roots last fall, joining the Grand Canyon HawkWatch migration crew. She looks forward to learning about the breeding cycle of raptors during the CARES internship. When her eyes aren’t pointed towards the sky, listening and looking for birds, you can find her climbing, writing, or poking away at a new knitting project.
Thanks to our partners at the Anticoagulant Rodenticide Task Force, Rocky Mountain Power, and supporters like you, we can provide these opportunities for up-and-coming biologists. If you would like to support this work, consider sponsoring a box in our network through our Adopt-a-Box program. With your donation, you’ll help replace or repair a box in our network that has decayed due to years of exposure to the elements: https://hawkwatch-international.myshopify.com/products/adopt-a-box
This blog was written by Sammy Riccio, our Communications Manager, as well as our 2026 CARES team. You can learn more about Sammy here.
