Sophia Haakman is something of a bird whisperer.
The 16-year-old Pineview School student doesn’t just notice Sarasota’s birds. She wants to understand how they live, what they need to survive and whether efforts to protect them are actually working.
That curiosity recently led her to design a bird monitoring project that documented the impact of local habitat restoration efforts — work that soon will be featured in Birding, the American Birding Association’s flagship magazine focused on bird identification and conservation. The article is tentatively scheduled to appear in the September issue…