SIBLEY — The St. Catherine Creek National Wildlife Refuge is a little more crowded this summer.

No, not with wildlife; with workers.

The refuge has four college students interning this summer and also has four Youth Conservation Corps high school students working as well.

The YCC workers consist of Chris Tucker, Laneisha Jackson and Raheem Frank, all of Natchez High, and Justin Hicks of Adams County Christian School.

The YCC students are working on several projects at the refuge this summer, including building a new fishing pier.

“It’s really a neat program,” Deputy Refuge Manager Chris Swanson said. “It’s a good experience, and allows young adults to come out to the refuge and learn about nature and the different function of things.”

The students do maintenance work, such as painting, mowing grass and assisting with construction.

But they are also in the program to learn about nature and wildlife, Swanson said.

“The reason for the program is for them to have a learning experience about nature,” Swanson said. “That’s one of the good things for them, they develop skills they haven’t had before. They learn about the environment and why they’re doing something. We tell them here’s why we’re doing this and here’s why it’s important.”

But work isn’t all the students do. They also get involved in programs the refuge offers, Swanson said.

“Outside of standard projects, we try to do things, such as field trips,” Swanson said. “We’ll take field trips where we do bird identification. We also talk to them about career kind of things, teach them some things maybe they haven’t seen before. We try to get them some real fun experiences tied to other learning experiences.”

The refuge also has four interns who are working on a range of projects, including surveying natural birds.

The four interns are Dawn Bumley from the University of Florida, Beverly McKinley from Mississippi State, Suzette Savoie from LSU and Courtney Schreckenberg from Southwest Missouri State.

“The interns have been real busy this summer,” Swanson said. “They’re doing a lot of bird work, inventorying the number of songbirds throughout the refuge and doing biological surveys.”

One of the biggest projects that the group is working on is a Brown-headed Cowbird survey.

Brown-headed Cowbirds are brood parasites, meaning they lay their eggs in other birds nests and leave them for the other birds to raise.

Savoie said they are trying to find out ways the cowbirds are affecting the native bird population.

“We’ve found five or six (cowbird) sites on the refuge,” Savoie said. “We’re trying to see what areas of the refuge we don’t need to mow anymore, because cowbirds like short grass to graze in.”

Other projects the interns are working on include making a better Magnolia Trail map and channelization of the Homochitto River.

The internships last through mid-August, and Savoie said she is going to enjoy every minute of it.

“They’ve got me pretty busy, but it’s great fun,” Savoie said. “I’ve always known I wanted to work outside with wildlife.”