Kyle Davis receives Superior Rating at State Science Day

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Any­one who has wan­dered the aisles dur­ing the Big Wal­nut Sci­ence Fair is aware of Kyle Davis. He’s the stu­dent that has been turn­ing an inter­est in Ornithol­ogy into sci­ence fair projects that have earned Supe­rior rat­ings year after year since the fifth grade, and more than one trip to State Sci­ence Day.

Davis, now a Big Wal­nut High School fresh­man, not only scored Supe­rior at this year’s Big Wal­nut Sci­ence Fair with his project, Rufous-collared Spar­row: Size Vari­a­tion with Alti­tude, he also scored Supe­rior at Cen­tral Dis­trict Sci­ence Day at Colum­bus State, and at the Sat­ur­day, May 5, Ohio Acad­emy of Sci­ence State Sci­ence Day at The Ohio State University.

It was at State Sci­ence Day that the qual­ity of Davis’ Ornitho­log­i­cal research became appar­ent. He’s only a fresh­man, right? And that ninth grade trip to State Sci­ence Day is where most fresh­men learn the ropes; where they find out to exactly what level they have to take their work to in order to earn prizes in sub­se­quent years.

But for those who have fol­lowed the work of Kyle Davis over the past five years it was not sur­pris­ing that he came home with a Governor’s Thomas Edi­son Award for Excel­lence in Infor­ma­tion Sci­ence & Tech­nol­ogy Research, a National Asso­ci­a­tion of Biol­ogy Teach­ers Award, and an Ohio Wes­leyan Uni­ver­sity State Sci­ence Day Award.

Davis said he has been inter­ested in birds since he was four years old when a barn owl lived in the fam­ily barn for the win­ter. He did his first sci­ence fair project in fifth grade under the direc­tion of Big Wal­nut Ele­men­tary School teacher Rina Hoge.

That’s when Ohio Wes­leyan Uni­ver­sity Ornithol­o­gist Dr. Edward Burtt, a.k.a. Dr. Jed, noticed Davis, and his inter­est in birds was taken to a new level.

“Dr. Jed has been my men­tor,” Davis said. “He’s helped with my projects and got me involved in other activ­i­ties at Ohio Wes­leyan. I’ve been bird net­ting with Dr. Jed since my first sci­ence fair project.”

At Big Wal­nut, Davis has been mon­i­tor­ing the 38 bird boxes sur­round­ing the school, 10 more boxes will be installed this year, adding data to the bird trail pilot project. Many species use the bird boxes, Davis said. He typ­i­cally sees blue­birds, tree swal­lows and wrens; and this year there’s a tufted tit­mouse – he said he’s never seen that one before.

To extend that bird box project’s research Davis said he hopes to get a band­ing license to see if the birds return to the local habi­tat. One does not just start band­ing birds, he explained; the Wildlife Divi­sion of the Ohio Depart­ment of Nat­ural Resources reg­u­lates that activity.

Big Wal­nut High School sci­ence teacher Matt Wallschlaeger said band­ing is a very help­ful tool when study­ing a local bird habitat.

“Band­ing is espe­cially use­ful for under­stand­ing how much win­ter affects species,” Wallschlaeger said. “That’s what I’m hop­ing Kyle has the abil­ity to do. But his State Sci­ence Day Supe­rior per­for­mance and awards has been his first big step forward.”

Last week, Davis did a pre­sen­ta­tion for Wallschlaeger’s AP Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence class, talked about the Bird Trail and walked stu­dents around, show­ing them the bird boxes.

“Kyle’s work­ing in an area I’ve been inter­ested in since I was his age, so we have a com­mon core inter­est,” Wallschlaeger said. “I grad­u­ated from a school of envi­ron­men­tal sci­ence with a nat­ural resource major, so I’m inter­ested to see where he’s going to end up; and I’m def­i­nitely look­ing for­ward to see­ing him in my Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence class.”

Posted by Gary Henery on May 16 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.