Zaps are notes of awareness and pleas for action that appear in the corresponding print edition of Bird Observer. Here they are from the current issue.
August 1, 2026
5 MIN READ
Zaps
Thank You to Mary McKitrick for Five-Plus Years of Excellent Proofreading
Marsha C. Salett
When Mary McKitrick inquired about Bird Observer’s proofreader position, I was impressed with the skills she would bring to the journal. Not only is Mary a scientist and birder, she is also a stickler for grammar and punctuation, pays attention to detail, and has a curious and creative mind—attributes in a proofreader that make an editor’s job easier.
But what resonated with me most about Mary’s reason for volunteering for Bird Observer was that it echoed mine. She was birding again and wanted to get back to bird-related work. My reason was to get more involved in the birding community.
Mary originally worked in ornithology, but eventually ended up doing other science. You can read her backstory below. Her re-entry into the birding community started with Bird Observer but did not end there. Currently she is teaching an ornithology course at Smith College, working on a nocturnal flight calls project and a research project on Purple Martins, and is the newest member of the Massachusetts Avian Records Committee.
Thank you, Mary, for providing your birding expertise and proofreading skills to Bird Observer.
Here is Mary’s story in her own words:
In summer 2020, I responded to Marsha’s call for a volunteer to proofread Bird Observer. This appealed to me because I was toiling pointlessly in a zebrafish lab at UMass Amherst, endlessly stabbing zebrafish brains and cryo-sectioning and immunolabeling and in situ-ing and hoping to see the gene Sonic Hedgehog (SHH) expressed in the healed brain. We kept thinking it was expressing, but I finally concluded it was autofluorescence. I was birding a lot, but I wanted something meaningful to do that related to birds, and I wanted an outlet for my need to correct people’s spelling and grammar without them getting mad at me.
I am a high school dropout. I had been attending a private school in New York City when one of my brother’s friends, Hugh McGuinness, suggested I join him in Central Park to look at birds. I knew Hermit Thrush voices and Hugh said he could show me half a dozen. I did join him and that was it for me. I lost all interest in school—apart from chorus and madrigal singers and art classes—and my parents suggested I drop out. “But,” they said, “You have to do something, you cannot just read and draw and watch birds.”
I volunteered at National Audubon in the office of American Birds, reading the entire database of Christmas Bird Count reports. Tedious work, but I learned a lot. I took German at NYU at night and took a glorious pottery class at the top of Riverside Church, overlooking the Hudson—one of my most wonderful memories of that year. And I watched birds, of course. We lived near the Hudson River, and I could hear Laughing Gulls from our apartment every spring, and I could see and hear flickers and kestrels that sat on top of the water tank on top of our building across the courtyard.
My time at Manomet was without question the most wonderful summer I have ever spent. Trevor Lloyd-Evans was my mentor in the banding lab. Since I love challenges, I volunteered to take care of all the Empidonax flycatchers. Trevor and I measured everything we—mostly he—could think of, and we did my first ANOVA (Analysis of Variance). That was amazing, because I had missed third grade—an important time for math learning —and felt that it defined me as being poor at math. The secretary at Manomet at the time, Barb McGrath, told me later that she gave me about a week before I got back on the bus to New York. I stayed for eight months and never wanted to leave, but I was expected to get a degree, so I had to get back to school.
I transferred from Barnard to Smith and stayed there for three semesters before transferring to Princeton. I thought I had landed in This Side of Paradise and wondered what the heck I had gotten myself into. School has always been difficult for me if anything quantitative or boring was involved. Because of my as-yet-undetected learning disability, I always had to work 10 times harder than anyone else and sometimes I got the A and sometimes I did not. But I kept trying. I got a master’s degree at the University of Arizona and a PhD at University of Pittsburgh, where I absolutely loved the tedious work and loved working with Bob Raikow, who was just about the funniest guy I ever met. Long hours at the microscope gave me lots of time to think about avian evolution, phylogenetic systematics, music, art, drawing—everything.
I spent summers at University of Pittsburgh’s Pymatuning Laboratory of Ecology as a teaching assistant for Bill Searcy and did German translations for extra cash. I dreamt a new word one night: Urkampf®, which could easily mean “toilet training,” but my meaning was “the struggle of every systematist to ensure their phylogenies would reflect evolutionary relationships.”
I got my PhD in 3.2 years and had four papers that were published, in press, or submitted at the time I completed my degree. There were four museum ornithology jobs open, including one at the University of Michigan. I could not believe it when Michigan picked me. I loved everything about that job, except for teaching, but I had to do it, so I got good at it. One of my father’s friends worried about me; he used to talk about “early burnout,” and he loved saying it because everybody knew I would get tenure, with three National Science Foundation grants under my belt. But my rocket ship and I hit a glass ceiling so thick and transparent that we crashed and burned.
Fast forward to 2024 when I ended up teaching a tiny course about bird migration at Smith College. The first year, 2024, was okay. The second was amazing and led to me offering a summer research experience for five extraordinary students from Smith and UMass Amherst. Now they are all on their own rocket ships, and I will do everything in my power to make sure they get where they want to be.
I cannot adequately thank Marsha Salett, Peter Oehlkers, and the entire team at Bird Observer for providing the support I needed while finding my way back to bird research. I would also like to thank Marshall Iliff, Sebastian Jones, Lisa Schibley, Larry Therrien, Ted Gilliland, and the rest of the team on the Massachusetts Avian Records Committee for choosing me in October 2025 to join them. I could not believe they picked me. I have to say, though, they will probably dismiss me, because I can be annoying when it comes to existential questions.
Introducing Proofreader JoAnne Sgroi
Marsha C. Salett
Bird Observer welcomes JoAnne Sgroi as the journal’s current proofreader. She spent her career in publishing at Houghton Mifflin and her editing and proofreading skills are impressive.
I usually work with new proofreaders on their first issue to help familiarize them with our procedures, but I was off to Greece on a birding trip. After meeting JoAnne once and handing her the Bird Observer style sheet and proofreader’s instructions, I disappeared with little access to email for two-and-a-half weeks. She jumped right in to proofread the June 2026 issue. It came out on time and looks great. Thank you, JoAnne. And welcome to Bird Observer.
I asked JoAnne to introduce herself to our readers. See below:
I have been retired for several years after decades in the publishing business. I climbed the usual ladder and ended up as a senior editor at Houghton Mifflin in the school division, editing everything from elementary to college textbooks. It was an ongoing education.
Since retiring, my husband Al—a longtime subscriber to Bird Observer—and I have enjoyed traveling around the world —Africa, Europe, North America, South America, Central America, Hawaii, the Caribbean—mostly on birding expeditions with a few cultural trips sprinkled in between. He is the avid birder, and I am the tagalong, but I truly enjoy learning about birds and their habitats as well as meeting the nicest people. When we are not traveling, I enjoy playing the flute, cooking and baking, needlework, golfing, and spending time with friends and family.
Why did I decide to volunteer for Bird Observer? It is a way to give back to the wonderful birding community, and I really appreciate the support of the BO staff as I navigate the learning curve for this position.