The climate is changing so quickly, some species common to Aquidneck can’t keep up. Todd McLeish Newport Life magazine At the Sweet Flag Preserve adjacent to Bailey’s Brook in Middletown, Jameson Chace and his students at Salve Regina University spend two days a week each autumn capturing and banding birds as they fly through the area on migration. They’ve found it to be a hotspot of activity, and one that many birds depend on for rest and refueling before continuing on their long journey south. “If there’s a migratory bird that comes through the Northeast, it’s shown up there,” says Chace, associate professor of biology and chairman of Salve’s biology and biomedical sciences department. “These little bits of riparian conservation zones are doing a whole lot more for wildlife than we probably ever imagined. That’s the big takeaway from our research.”