Interesting people at Samo: Leo Gilman

Samo is home to many interesting students with varying interests. Juliette Dana Vale (’20), Leo Gilman (’21), Eleanor Hutman (’20) and Kole Lee (’21) are four students who are passionate about their specific interests. Since first grade, Leo Gilman (’21) has been interested in birds, especially songbirds because of the way they have adapted to their environment. He goes birding, going to a park or reserve and observing the birds there most weekends. He then takes his observations and inputs the species into an online database called Ebird, which is run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.  “I was always intrigued by birds and the way they behave, and eventually I just took a liking to that and developed it further,” Gilman said. Currently, Gilman soley observes and takes pictures of the birds. He then enters his observations into EBird, and the program allows the public to see where certain birds are based off of what he enters in. He hopes to also start an experiment on his own based off of an essential question that he proposed: How is bird song impacted by outside environmental factors and other birds? How does it change over time? “I came up with [the question] a few weeks ago, I decided I needed to do something bigger than what I was doing so I decided to formulate a question that had not been answered before, which was quite difficult because ornithology is a field that has been extensively researched,” Gilman said.  This question was also influenced by his interest in music. He is in band and orchestra and wanted to incorporate his expertise in music into his experiment.  Over the summer, Gilman participated in a program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which he thinks is the top bird lab in the world. At the camp, he woke up at 5 a.m. daily and went birding until 5 p.m. In addition, they examined dead specimens and studied them.  When he goes birding, his main goals are to see as many birds and species as he can and upload the information to Ebird so they can chart how many species there are in certain areas.    “My favorite part about birding is definitely seeing a new bird for the very first time. It’s very exhilarating seeing something for the first time, something that I’ve never really witnessed before. That’s the best feeling,” Gilman said.