Wendy Kuntz, a NAPIRE faculty mentor from University of Hawaii-Kapi’olani Community College, is advising a couple of students in projects about bird behavior and nest predation.  Here, Shaina, one of Wendy’s students, is placing 40 artificial nests within the Wilson Botanical Garden at Las Cruces to assess nest predation rates at both high nest locations (~2 m) and low nest locations (~1 m).  Shaina monitors loss of quail eggs in the nests over the course of a week.  I “helped” set a few of the nests up one day… but I ended up dropping the cooler full of quail eggs and smashed about 8 of them. I will not likely be asked to help again…