[uplifting music] [group faintly chattering] - Okay, we got a few more chairs.

A banding box.

- [Narrator] When does a research project call for an extra level of dedication?

When we need to know more about these guys.

And it's not just about getting up early, it's about doing anything you can to find answers.

[birds chirping] - We're gonna have to stay back and just kind of be incognito.

- [Narrator] Lindsay Addison and a band of volunteers have been banding birds called black skimmers since 2018.

She's recently taken another step to find out more about these colonies that dot the coast, including here at Wrightsville Beach.

It's all because over that time, Addison has developed a special understanding about where they go, how they live and what they eat.

But she's looking for more.

While banding birds uniquely identifies individuals for the rest of their lives and helps researchers better understand their behavior, Addison knows there's data that may be hidden, very hidden, so she's added another component.

- This year, we are also collecting poop.

[lively music] This is one of a few species we're collecting poop from, but we wanna find out what they're eating.

[bird chirping] - [Narrator] That's right.

They're collecting the poop of these birds.

The way they do it is through what's called DNA metabarcoding.

Addison and her team have partnered with a Cornell Lab of Ornithology that will take the samples and analyze them.

They'll isolate those samples and match the poop with the known genomes and other data from fellow black skimmers.

- And, basically, we collect poop samples from a relatively clean surface, so not a lotta contamination.

If you guys ate tuna for breakfast, please sanitize your hands before touching the poop.

- [Narrator] They wanna get about 40 samples today and add those samples taken from other days and other locations as far away as Cape Lookout to the north.

But there's a bigger reason for this research.

- The number of nesting pairs that we've been counting in the state through our censuses has been decreasing.

So that's one of the reasons we're interested in in learning more about them through the banding and through the diet study by collecting poop samples.

[whimsical music] - [Narrator] Conducting research outdoors like this has challenges.

Since it's like herding cats, they need to create their own lab space on the beach out where there wasn't one before, and keep their research subjects safe, and Addison has created a system with a few parts.

- So the way that we catch these birds is we're gonna put up the drift fence on either side and that's just gonna prevent the chicks from just taking off and running way down the beach because they're basically, completely, they scatter.

- [Narrator] And one of those parts is actually catching them, which is, yes, more difficult than you might expect.

- Once you put a chick in the bag, you can't set the bag down because- - [Narrator] Addison says they need to be careful not to injure the chicks.

So what they do is use paper bags where they place the chick to bring them over to a children's playpen she brought that will serve as kind of a waiting room.

- And while they are waiting for banding, they are going to stand around and stare at the other chicks and probably do a little bit of pooping.

We might... [whimsical music] - [Narrator] These chicks are pretty fast, so catching them safely with a net is a challenge since this process is a bit hectic.

[whimsical music continues] [birds squawking] [bird chirps] - [Addison] Gather up the wings and there's a little skinner chick.

- [Participant 1] Hold on.

- [Participant 2] Okay.

[whimsical music continues] [birds chirping] - [Addison] We have a lot.

- [Narrator] Now for the fun part, getting the samples.

- [Addison] So that's, we want gritty bits.

- [Narrator] The birds have pooped on cardboard the volunteers have laid out.

Addison and her team carefully take up those samples and put them in labeled vials so they can match the poop with the bird that made it.

- Hey Marlene, do you wanna scribe?

- [Narrator] Once they get enough samples, they continue with the banding work.

With an adhesive, a numbered band is placed on the chick's leg.

- One, two, five, four, zero, four, six, nine, one is what's on... 351.

- Narrator] One by one, they measure head size, weight and any other data they need.

- And we take a few feathers.

So, you can actually determine the sex of the birds with DNA work.

The base of the feathers have a little bit of DNA in them.

So, you can determine the sex.

- [Narrator] Addison says what they can also do with a DNA is determine whether the bird is feeding in fresh or salt water.

She says the fish these birds eat are small and travel in schools near the surface.

- The abundance and distribution of fish is affected a lot by ocean temperatures.

And, so, obviously with climate change you could have dramatic shifts in prey availability and species composition that can affect the health of of seabird colonies.

[whimsical music] - [Narrator] Once they finish their work, it's time for the birds to head back.

They hope the experience wasn't too stressful for their subjects.

Addison will need to wait some months before the data gets back from the partner lab at Cornell.

But in the meantime, [bird squawking] she and her trustee band of volunteers look forward to the next trip out.

Meanwhile, she acknowledges her work with the black skimmers is pretty unusual.

- [Addison] I feel like this is the culmination of a general familial scatological sense of humor.

Poop jokes are funny.

[laughs] [birds squawking]