Bill Drummond Young Birder Scholarship

The BBC Young Birder Scholarship program, initiated in 2015, has been renamed the Bill Drummond Young Birder Scholarship in honor of one of our club’s most distinguished leaders. Each year the BBC offers one or two scholarships to the Coastal Maine Studies for Teens program at National Audubon’s Hog Island camp in Maine. These scholarships, instituted to nurture interest in bird study and conservation among young birders, cover the full cost of the camp. The scholarships are supported entirely by member donations. BBC members can make a donation of any amount, in Bill Drummond’s honor, on the Join/Renew section of the website.

Announcing the 2024 BBC Teen Birder Scholarship Awards:

We are pleased to announce our two annual Bill Drummond Young Birder Scholarship recipients, Evelyn Jones of Lunenburg and John Wysocki of Hamilton. These scholarships cover the full cost ($1690) of the Coastal Maine Bird Studies for Teens program at National Audubon’s Hog Island camp on June 16-21, 2024. This year’s field of applicants was the strongest ever, and we thank all applicants for their interest. Evelyn, who started birding through a “penguin obsession,” has been involved for years with the Mass Audubon camp at Wachusett Meadows, where she is now a Counselor in Training. She aspires to go into the field of bird conservation and ecology, and she hopes to learn things at Hog Island that will help her teach a new generation about the “magical world” of birds. John, an active BBC member on field trips, has volunteered for the Lexington Conservation Commission by tracking, monitoring, and using his photos and recordings to document wildlife. He looks forward to learning from knowledgeable teachers and sharing his passion for birding with other teen birders at Hog Island. Congratulations, Evelyn and John!

The BBC continues to carry out the mission of our founders, who believed they had a “sacred obligation” to cultivate young birders and established a BBC Junior Department that offered bike-birding trips, lessons in drawing birds and conducting censuses, and visits to the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. Maurice Broun, Chandler Robbins, Richard Veit, Peter Alden, and Chris Leahy, among others, were all once young BBC members, “full of wonderment” as one BBC president described them, who went on to become leaders of American ornithology and conservation. We are encouraged by the passion for birding and commitment to conservation we see in our scholarship recipients and other young birders we continue to welcome into the BBC.

Scholarships are supported through the generous donations of club members. To donate, visit the link at the bottom of this page (or designate an amount on the “BBC Young Birder Scholarship” line on the back page of the club bulletin when you renew membership).

How to apply (2024 applications are now closed – check back next year for 2025 scholarship applications!)

Applicants must be New England residents, ages 14-17, and must submit a written application and two letters of reference. Preference will be given to applicants with individual or family BBC memberships. To be considered a member, an applicant may join the club at the time of application. All our previous scholarship recipients have had tremendous adventures at Hog Island. “I thoroughly enjoyed my week on Hog Island,” wrote 2022 recipient Johnny Owens in a thank-you note, “from learning about tracking bird migration, to landing on Eastern Egg Rock and seeing the large colony of nesting seabirds, to meeting the researchers who work on Eastern Egg Rock. It was so amazing to have the chance to meet highly influential researchers and conservationists, and to see the successfully restored puffin colony on Eastern Egg Rock up close. I loved spending time with birders my own age with whom I could relate. . . I am immensely thankful for this incredible opportunity.”

Click the links below to read application instructions and download a prior year’s application form (for reference only – not currently taking applications).