![\"Countdown](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/DEP-018-UComm-Commencement-Graphic-FY22_bookish-300x76.jpg\")
<\/p>\nIt\u2019s a Wednesday in mid-February, and while the air still holds tight to the chill of winter, the warm sun is shining brightly as Maria B. Antony \u201919 (CLAS\/CAHNR) walks slowly along the paved pathway around the pond at the lower campus of UConn Health.<\/p>\n
Not far from the critical bustle of the hospital, as traffic stops-and-goes through the intersection at the nearby campus entrance on Farmington Avenue, Antony is watching the brush line near the water closely for a telltale sign \u2013 a wave of a branch, a rustle of dry leaves, a flutter of feathers.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cTypically, I’ll scan by naked eye,\u201d she explains, a small pair of black binoculars dangling around her neck.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ll just look at what’s around me. If you’re on a body of water, you scan the body of water. Then, you start to move upwards, so that you don’t miss anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
On this morning, we\u2019re looking for birds, and in our short time out near the pond, a rowdy and unmistakable band of Canada geese dominate the landscape.<\/p>\n
But Antony quickly points out the other, quieter birds she spots \u2013 like a pair of mallards, one a brilliantly iridescent green male and the other a mottled brown female, their bright orange feet clearly visible even from the opposite bank, and their quacks occasionally audible over the squawking and honking and splashing of the geese in the water.<\/p>\n
A flock of shiny black grackles flits to-and-fro.<\/p>\n
A group of vultures make a brief appearance, circling above The Jackson Laboratory.<\/p>\n
And though we can\u2019t see the bird itself, we hear the song of a cardinal somewhere in the surrounding trees.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh!\u201d Antony suddenly calls out, an excited lilt to her voice. \u201cWe have a red-tail!\u201d as a large and graceful hawk swoops out from behind the hospital tower.<\/p>\n
She lifts her binoculars to her eyes to catch a closer glimpse of the bird. It lets out a shrill call and is quickly joined by another raptor, this time a more elusive red-shouldered hawk. We watch as the two large birds of prey circle each other, sparring in the air over the campus.<\/p>\n
Moments later, a small bird flies right toward us, headed for a piece of deadwood in an area near the pond. Antony identifies it almost immediately not by how it looks, but by its distinctive up-and-down motion in flight \u2013 it\u2019s a woodpecker, a red-bellied woodpecker to be exact. Bigger than the downy woodpecker, she explains, but both species are smaller than the pileated woodpecker \u2013 those can be quite a stunning sight.<\/p>\n
For a busy medical student, more than just a hobby\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n In an environment of pressure, with the demands of the hospital environment, under the constant glare of technology, nature is still all around us, Antony says \u2013 and watching the birds offers a tangible, easy, and mindful way to focus on the world beyond the realm of medicine.<\/p>\n \u201cI think in medicine, and in many fields, there is this huge impact of burnout \u2013 in a medical career, even in the training of medical professionals \u2013 and the opportunity to go outside, take a moment to recenter, and really get focused in the present, it\u2019s there in really in any type of environment,\u201d Antony says. \u201cYou can be in Hartford, you can be here locally in Farmington, and still have some opportunity to find something.\u201d<\/p>\n Birdwatching is more than a hobby for Antony, who will graduate from UConn School of Medicine this spring \u2013 it was a lifeline for her during her medical training.<\/p>\n \u201cWatching peregrine falcons nest from the large windows of a Connecticut hospital was my therapeutic diversion,\u201d she wrote in an article published by the BMJ in December<\/a>. \u201cLooking outside provided a pause for reflection, a chance to recalibrate. Birding connects us with the rhythm of the seasons and makes apparent the constancy and change in our shared ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n Antony started birdwatching nearly a decade ago, while she was still an undergraduate studying cell and molecular biology and allied health at UConn. She loved photography, and started a relationship with an avid birdwatcher \u2013 slowly, their hobbies merged.<\/p>\n Now engaged, their shared love of birdwatching has taken them on planned trips to Costa Rica in search of rare birds, as well as impromptu jaunts around the United States as part of an online community of birders who share sightings with each other through apps like eBird<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cMore recently, our target was a short-eared owl that was in a community in Bloomfield \u2013 it was reported in a senior center,\u201d Antony says, so off they went. \u201cJanuary is when a lot of people’s lists for the year restart, so everyone was out. You could see a whole community of birdwatchers out on that date in early January. So, we got short-eared owl for the year.\u201d<\/p>\n Medicine and birdwatching have more in common than you may think<\/strong><\/p>\n Birdwatching and medicine aren\u2019t so different, according to Antony, who drew parallels between the two in her article for the BMJ \u2013 since its publication, she\u2019s heard from birdwatching doctors around the globe about their experiences and the parallels they\u2019ve also seen between their practice and their birding.<\/p>\n \u201cThe history of medicine, in general, really started back in the Renaissance, where people started to look at things differently,\u201d Antony says. \u201cThere was more of a focus on this understanding of human anatomy, being descriptive and being accurate, and utilizing cadaver studies. Around that same time, a physician actually started the similar dissection of birds as well as the illustration of birds with anatomic detail that had some species-type information.\u201d<\/p>\n Both birdwatching and medicine require practitioners to use both sight and sound, she explains. Cardiologists listen to heard sounds to help make diagnostic determinations.<\/p>\n \u201cHere in Connecticut, we have two species, American crow and fish crow,\u201d she says. \u201cThey\u2019re totally indistinguishable if you were to just look at them, but their calls have a very unique difference between the two. You really need to wait for the call to make that diagnostic determination.\u201d<\/p>\n In the same way that binoculars and scopes make it possible to view birds in their natural environments, tools like loupes and binocular vision are used regularly by dentists and surgeons in their practice.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIn the urology lab, there’s endoscopes to look inside the bladder and get a really good idea of what is happening inside the bladder without any incisions, all minimally invasive,\u201d Antony says, \u201cvery similar to how we often take scopes out on bodies of water when birdwatching.\u201d<\/p>\n The use of technology in both birdwatching and urology practice is of particular interest to Antony \u2013 she was placed in a nephrology rotation early on in medical school and realized that she really liked it.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can, from a medical perspective, really change the trajectory and course of these patients\u2019 disease and ultimately avoid something as morbid as dialysis,\u201d she says. \u201cFrom a surgery standpoint, I really liked that the surgeon can come in, particularly the urologist \u2013 say that someone has an obstructed kidney or some congenital malformation of their urinary tract \u2013and they can intervene, and then see that improvement in kidney function on an acute level, and then follow through that across a lifespan.\u201d<\/p>\n Moving from medical school to residency – and new birding precincts\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n During her medical school training, she spent a year in Maryland at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center<\/a> through the Medical Research Scholars Program<\/a>, where she primarily worked with patients with congenital kidney cancers, including von Hippel-Lindau disease, or VHL.<\/p>\n In those cases, she says, you\u2019re not only seeing the patient, but also their families \u2013 tracking the disease as it progresses through generations and seeing first-hand how medical and technological breakthroughs can change patient and family trajectories.<\/p>\n \u201cUrology has really been at the forefront of endoscopic technology, as you can think of stones, lithotripsy, any type of viewing \u2013 you can use a camera to look in the bladder, and then more recently, flexible cameras can actually allow you to go from the bladder into the kidney,\u201d Antony says. \u201cWith robotic surgeries, urologists are at the forefront of adopting and adapting new technology that\u2019s emerged. Originally, the port system for the da Vinci robot was four or five ports. Now, there\u2019s a single port system that the urologists are moving forward at Hartford Hospital.<\/p>\n \u201cThe opportunity to work with new technologies is something that I find super interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n Antony will get to continue exploring new technologies as she moves into her first year of urology residency this coming July \u2013 the soon-to-be doctor and \u201cdouble Husky\u201d is heading to Ohio and a spot at the prestigious Cleveland Clinic\u2019s urology residency program<\/a>, where she matched in early February.<\/p>\n And while she\u2019ll be relocating her backyard feeder, and saying goodbye to a beloved cormorant that sits on a post at the West Hartford reservoir \u2013 hailing the return of summer for her each year \u2013 she\u2019s already looking forward to finding new favorite places to spot birds in Ohio.<\/p>\n![\"Maria](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/illo1-300x156.png\")
![\"Canada](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/AdobeStock_221581741-300x207.jpeg\")
![\"Medical](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/illo4-300x144.png\")