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Emily Rebecca Cramer didn’t want to be a biology major when she first came to St. Mary’s. Her sister, a senior at the College, already was majoring in it. But, when you get excited about moss growing on a wall, you realize you may need to change your mind.
“It wasn’t until halfway through my freshman year that I was convinced I should do biology,” said Emily, or Becky as she is known. “I got excited showing my mother the sporophyte generation of some moss growing on a wall. If I could get excited about alternation of generations (the life cycle of plants), what else was I to do? Since then, I have turned into one of the biggest biology dorks ever -- and I say that with pride,” she finishes.
Becky, a former biology major and member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society, took her love of the outdoors and biology and poured it into research for her SMP (St. Mary’s Project) on how the vocal performance levels of red-winged blackbirds affects territorial behavior in the males. Her work has garnered praise from her mentor, J. Jordan Price of the biology department, and her findings are in the process of being submitted to the scientific journal Animal Behavior, with Becky as first author, and, possibly, to Maryland Birdlife, a magazine published by the Maryland Ornithological Society.
“Becky’s astonishingly bright and hardworking, and has been an absolute joy to mentor,” Price confides. “What's impressed me the most, though, is the strong passion she seems to have for biology and for science in general. She has a genuine curiosity about the natural world that is just so wonderful to see in a student, and I hope it's something she never loses. I'm also impressed by her knitting ability. She knitted a hat for me that is just amazing. It has red-winged blackbird colors and even has little blackbird songs knitted along the sides.”
It was during the summer of 2003 as a participant in the Weitzel Summer Research Program that Becky began her work on red-winged blackbirds. This program enables talented students to work on a self-defined research project alongside a faculty mentor.
“Before the Weitzel Program, I hadn't really paid much attention to red-winged blackbirds,” Becky explains. “Then, after spending every waking moment watching or reading about them that summer, I really got attached to them. They have a lot of personality.”
According to Price, red-winged blackbirds are great subjects for investigating “all sorts of biological questions, especially ones about animal behavior. They are easy to observe and (with some practice) relatively easy to catch. They are also locally abundant here on the St. Mary's campus, particularly in the spring and early summer. Male blackbirds conspicuously defend territories during these months so are very easy to find.”
As she saw this research from the summer program blossoming into a potential SMP, Becky sought funding from outside organizations to continue. “I needed additional funds to let me to spend the following summer on campus to work on my SMP and to pay for supplies,” she explained. “I was lucky to get not only a grant from Sigma Xi (a scientific research and honors society), but also one from the Maryland Ornithological Society.”
So with her huge straw hat, tape recorders and microphones in hand, and help from friends Nick Friedman and Sarah Walker, Becky worked outside “at ungodly hours of the morning” all summer. For one aspect of her research, Becky “had tapes of the red-winged blackbird songs that I made from recordings I did during the Weitzel program and played them to males out in the field to see how they would react. During these playbacks, I also tape recorded the songs that the males sang in response. Mostly, when they hear the tapes play, they freak out and do displays and sing, because they really, really want the other male out of their territory.”
When asked which faculty members at St. Mary’s helped inspire her, Becky demurs that “it would take too much room to name them all.” But points to “Jordan Price and his enthusiasm for biology, supportive attitude, and great sense of humor that are constant sources of inspiration. What other professor would promise his lab class that he would sing "O Canada"—in French, no less—if they finished early, and then actually do it?”
“I grew up on a sheep farm outside Frederick, Maryland,” Becky reminisces, “and think being outside so much is what made me really like biology. My sister and friends and I used to play in the creek a lot looking for crayfish and building dams. Of course, working with the sheep got us outside a lot, too. I love going out in the middle of the night during lambing season to check on the ewes—it’s always fun to help the slimy, cold newborns get up and get their first meals from mom's udder. And I love that after feeding the sheep in the winter—when it's frosty and chilly, and the moon is just coming up -- you can hear the sheep pigging down dinner in the barn, and hear owls calling from down in the trees. I guess growing up outside and having a family with a deep appreciation for nature made me like biology so much.”
