Student showcase

Cheryl Miner-Williams

My name is Cheryl Miner-Williams, I am a 22 year old student at the University of Auckland.

I originally began studying a Bachelor of Music in 2003, as singing is a great passion of mine. After a year of study I decided my true passions lay in the field of science and changed  my programme to a Bachelor of Science. I completed this last year, achieving the position of senior scholar in Marine science.

Throughout my Bachelor of Science my focus was on the marine field especially fisheries. However over the summer of 2006-2007, I was given the opportunity to participate in a summer studentship run by the University of Auckland. This involved traveling to the Hunua ranges to study the vocalizations of the New Zealand endemic bird, the Kokako. This really sparked my interest as it incorporates my two passions music and conservation. Throughout the summer, I recorded the song of many different kokako individuals.  I then compared the vocalizations of the endemic Hunua kokako to other kokako individuals recently released in the Hunua’s from another population in Mapara. This confirmed that kokako from different regions sing different tunes (called dialects) which may interfere with interbreeding between two separate populations.

This studentship heightened my interest in the vocalizations of birds and lead me to my current Bachelor of Science Honours project on the vocalizations of two New Zealand endemic birds, the rifleman and the whitehead. I am working hard on this project that I will finish in November. I then hope to gain a scholarship to start a PhD, perhaps on the vocalizations of penguins.