Our fourteen-year-old student scientist achieves her first published manuscript on the timing of calcium consumption of Western Bluebirds

Early in 2019, Lara Tseng, then a middle school student aged thirteen, submitted to the Southern California Bluebird Club (and its auxiliary program, the Cavity Conservation Initiative) a request for funding for her proposed study of calcium intake by Western Bluebirds.  She proposed using existing bluebird nest boxes to collect the data.  Since Lara was already the organization’s youngest nest box monitor,  it was natural that she also requested that the Club’s experienced nest box monitors assist her in collecting the data. 

Lara posed the hypothesis, designed the methodology, supervised the project participants, collected, and interpreted the data. The study was conducted during the 2013 breeding season.  Lara received support from several professionals in the process of writing her manuscript.  

The manuscript has recently been published in the Journal of Emerging Investigators, 8 December 2021 Vol 4  I 6.  It took a year to bring it to a standard suitable for publication.  Lara illustrated a remarkable level of determination to accomplish this.  She found it a valuable experience in the rigors of scientific study and reporting.

We applaud her.  We are immensely proud to have supported her work and look forward to her promising future as a scientist.   Lara is now a biology major in her first year at California State University Los Angeles.

Please use this link to read the full manuscript.