Eagle Scout builds birdhouses to record wildlife during eclipse

FINDLAY, Ohio (WTVG) - A total solar eclipse that will sweep across North America is still months away when the moon will completely block the sun for about four minutes.

Findlay High School junior Kellan Bruni is making plans to document the behavior of birds on April 8, 2024, and report his findings to Globe Mission Earth, a NASA partnership.

Bruni, 16, a member of Boy Scout Troop 302 in Findlay, built six birdhouses this summer, working towards his Eagle Scout badge.

“My grandpa’s been saving wood, for a long while, my grandma would always yell at him for keeping it,” Bruni said, reflecting on how the project got started.

Out of that savings, Bruni was able to construct the birdhouses that will house cameras to record bird movement.

“We teamed up with NASA and the Toledo Zoo, and they wanted to study what animals would do, so not only do we have cameras inside the bird houses we have some on the outside too,” Bruni said.

The birdhouses will be placed on a prairie, that Bruni helped create behind Glenwood Middle School in Findlay when Bruni was in seventh grade.

“With Kellan being a former student here at Glenwood Middle School it was a natural partnership with him and so we were just excited that he was willing to do his Eagle Scout project to help us build the bird boxes,” Kim Fillart said while prepping her seventh-grade science classroom for the opening day of school.

Out of that bird house building partnership with Bruni’s former seventh-grade science teacher, Kim Fillhart, a new idea hatched, documenting birds during the eclipse, through another partnership with Globe Mission Earth.

“Findlay and Hancock County being in the pathway for the total solar eclipse, we’re gonna use all that data and we actually will send it to NASA,” Fillhart said.

How will the local bird population react on April 8 during the eclipse is anyone’s guess.

“I think they’re going to try to go sleep early,” Bruni said with a smile.

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