WARREN, MI—According to Paul Messing, birds and batteries go together like electric vehicles and charging stations. Messing, a battery systems engineer at General Motors’ Technical Center, is an avid birdwatcher.

During his off-hours, Messing serves as president of the Macomb County Audubon Society, a territory north of Detroit that includes the Tech Center, in addition to a variety of automotive assembly plants owned by OEMs and suppliers.

Messing, who claims that he has spotted more than 250 bird species, says he enjoys that hobby because he “just loves data.”

“I’m a real data geek, and there’s a lot you can track with birdwatching,” explains Messing. “I record my sightings in birdwatching apps and compile a yearly one-pager. And I keep it just for myself.

“According to my tracking, I saw the most osprey together at one time in Macomb County last year,” claims Messing, who shot the photo of Wilma (see above), a female peregrine falcon who lives on the grounds of the GM Tech Center, as she patiently waited for her nest box to be cleaned.

Messing’s GM career began in 1997, starting as a vehicle validation engineer in Warren. Today, he oversees the high-tech equipment at the automaker’s battery labs, where the company develops, tests and analyzes current and future battery technologies.

Combining his work with his passion for birds and wildlife, Messing helps organize environmental volunteer events and supports GM’s facilities teams by monitoring different bird species on campus, including mapping nests and tracking local animals living in the local wildlife habitat.

"I saw a snowy egret here on campus one time,” Messing points out. “It was one of the only sightings of that species in the entire county that year.”

Birdwatching activity picks up in the spring and Messing is looking forward to hosting his annual Easter Monday Birdwatching event on the Warren campus on April 21.

“Each April, I invite the Macomb Audubon Society to come to the Tech Center to find as many birds as possible,” says Messing. “Last year, we tallied 37 species in one day.”