Kate McKay (she/her) is a birder and naturalist from upstate New York. Her lifelong love of nature has inspired her to pursue a career in conservation, and she is currently studying environmental biology and applied ecology at Cornell University. Kate has conducted field studies for many nature organizations in the Northeast, including surveying whip-poor-wills for the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, documenting amphibian road crossings for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and conducting songbird surveys for the National Park Service. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, drawing, and photography.
We first hired Kate as an easement monitoring intern in the summer of 2024. She loved it so much that she returned for a second summer of easement monitoring in 2025. Having spent the last three summers in the beautiful Monadnock Region, Kate is looking forward to returning again to intern with the Harris Center’s land protection and stewardship program. You can read her article “Diary of an Easement Monitoring Intern,” which documents her experience working for the Harris Center in writing and photographs, here.
