Professor Fran Viscovitch and her Nassau Community College students at the Garden City Bird Sanctuary in October. Professor Fran Viscovitch brought her environmental science students to the Garden City Bird Sanctuary for a literal field day. The students were given a tour of the 9-acre Nassau County Storm Water Basin and worked with a Global Positioning System (GPS) instrument to map locations of nesting boxes and features at the site. The GPS instrument, similar to those now available for automotive use, links with satellites in space to provide accurate "real time" location measurements of latitude and longitude as well as elevations. The Garden City Bird Sanctuary is developing a Geographic Information System (GIS) map to inventory the site, trees, memorials and features at the community nature preserve. Garden City High School student Andrew Nanayakkara with Troop 55 is also doing the work with through a Boy Scout Eagle project.

Dr. Viscovitch, a former USEPA geologist met Garden City Bird Sanctuary founder Rob Alvey several years ago at a public environmental meeting in Floral Park. Since then, she has been a serious supporter of the Garden City site and has helped research mushrooms and fungi that can be found there. The NCC students also conducted an inventory and cleanout of many of the nesting boxes, reporting a good assortment of successful nests, as well as an occasional mouse occupant or wasp nest. The inventory results are tabulated by the Bird Sanctuary, which has now had over 80 species of birds identified, including the latest observation, a screech owl heard recently at night.