Beginning in 1929, she spent eight years studying these birds and focused on interactions, breeding, territoriality, learning, instinct and song.[6] In 1931 she met Ernst Mayr at a meeting of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU), and he was delighted to meet an American who was "interested in more than faunistic records and pretty pictures"[11] and encouraged her to write and arranged the publishing the results of her studies. Following the publication Nice was elected the first woman president of the Wilson Club and to fellowship of the AOU. In 1932 the family went to Europe to attend the International Physiological Congress in Rome.