Atlantic Puffin at Hornøya, Norway
New opening for a 3-year PhD project in 'Seabird Ecology in a Changing Arctic' at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (Tromsø) and the Arctic University of Norway (UiT). Apply before 25 Mar 2026. #seabirdscience @ninanatureresearch.bsky.social nina.attract.reachmee.com/jobs/84-phd-...
📣Please share: We are looking for a field assistant to join our team in studying #ruffs on coastal meadows at Botnian Bay in Finland. The job will provide fantastic insights into lekking behaviour and provide essential skills in field ornithology. Details here www.bi.mpg.de/2790786/2512...
Examples of some recent papers from graduate students in my group - a full list of recent papers and preprints can be found here (https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=pTdxVdIAAAAJ) and profile of the group here: https://egioxford.web.ox.ac.uk/members
The annual Wytham Field Team Photo!
Celebrating a successful field season with great food & good company - May 2025
Front view of the Life & Mind Building, which opened in Oct 2025: The new home of Biology at Oxford
Interested in a PhD in ornithology? Funding available for projects at the interface of ecology, behaviour & evolution from Oct '26 working on long-term population studies of tits at Wytham, based in @biology.ox.ac.uk in the new Life & Mind Building in Oxford
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
These findings show that redstart chicks can learn to recognize novel alarm calls by associating them with familiar alarm calls. This demonstrates that nestling birds eavesdrop on the alarm calls of other species through acoustic association.
When we first played back the novel calls, the nestlings showed no response. We then played the unfamiliar call six times together with redstart alarm calls. After this training phase, nestlings responded to the novel call in the same way as to alarm calls of their own species.
However, parents are not always around to warn them. Alarm calls from other species may then provide an additional valuable source of information. We tested whether nestling redstarts can learn to recognize unfamiliar calls by associating them with known alarm calls from their own species.
Predators pose a major threat to nestling birds, so it is important that nestlings recognize and respond to signals that indicate danger. When their parents make alarm calls, for instance, chicks typically stop begging and crouch down to avoid being detected.
New paper led by Jinggang Zhang just out in @royalsocietypublishing.org! We show that nestling redstarts learn to respond to calls of other species if hear them together with alarm calls of their own species doi.org/10.1098/rspb...
However, parents are not always around to warn them. Alarm calls from other species may then provide an additional valuable source of information. We tested whether nestling redstarts can learn to recognize unfamiliar calls by associating them with known alarm calls from their own species.
Predators pose a major threat to nestling birds, so it is important that nestlings recognize and respond to signals that indicate danger. When their parents make alarm calls, for instance, chicks typically stop begging and crouch down to avoid being detected.
Spectacular!
Honeyguides lead you to 🍯, but if you don't reward the bird, next time it will guide you to a lion 🦁! So goes the story, but do honeyguides actually guide to dangerous animals, and is it punishment? New research suggests they do, but it's more "oops" than "revenge!" doi.org/10.1002/ece3...
Males that returned to the study area also had higher siring success and stayed longer in the study area than males that had not been in the study area the previous year 5/6
Males that had higher siring success and had stayed in the study area for longer were more likely to return 4/6
However, a very small proportion of ~900 colour banded pectoral sandpipers did return to their former breeding site in the subsequent breeding season, with males returning more often (2.4%) than females (0.5%) 3/6
Satellite tagging showed that pectoral sandpipers typically do not return anywhere near their former breeding site, with a median dispersal distance between years of >800 km for both males and females 2/6
New paper on breeding site fidelity in pectoral sandpipers out in @asab.org! The pectoral sandpiper is a highly nomadic polygynous shorebird, but a very small proportion of individuals is nevertheless faithful to their breeding site between years 1/6 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
We conclude that breeding site fidelity may be a beneficial strategy for individuals that are successful in a certain location, even in species that are generally nomadic. Big thanks to the co-authors and the many people that contributed to data collection! 6/6
We conclude that breeding site fidelity may be a beneficial strategy for individuals that are successful in a certain location, even in species that are generally nomadic. Big thanks to the co-authors and the many people that contributed to data collection! 6/6
Males that returned to the study area also had higher siring success and stayed longer in the study area than males that had not been in the study area the previous year 5/6
Males that had higher siring success and had stayed in the study area for longer were more likely to return 4/6
However, a very small proportion of ~900 colour banded pectoral sandpipers did return to their former breeding site in the subsequent breeding season, with males returning more often (2.4%) than females (0.5%) 3/6
Satellite tagging showed that pectoral sandpipers typically do not return anywhere near their former breeding site, with a median dispersal distance between years of >800 km for both males and females 2/6
New paper on the demographic drivers of cultural evolution in Great Tit song published today - epic work led by @nilomr.bsky.social with help from @andreaestandia.bsky.social Ella Cole & Sara Keen. Why did we do this, and what did we find? 🧵 follows: 1/n
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
How much effort have you put in this Valentine's Day?
Research has revealed that male Ruff travel thousands of kilometres in search of mating opportunities over the course of the breeding season:
Did you get it? Glad the book received a good home! 😅
I am a sucker for natural history books, and occasionally find a really good offer for a book that I already have (see www.amazon.co.uk/dp/185310566X). Very tempted to buy this one as a 2nd copy, but that would open the floodgates. Someone please buy this fabulous book for less than a cup of coffee!
Large-scale sampling of potential breeding sites in male ruffs | royalsocietypublishi... | Proceedings of the Royal Society B | #ornithology 🪶
We suggest that breeding site sampling on a large spatial scale may common in polygamous species with uniparental care, especially those that are migratory, have high reproductive skew, and show spatial variability in the timing of breeding 7/7
Similar breeding site sampling on a large scale has previously been found in males of the polygynous pectoral sandpiper (see www.nature.com/articles/nat...), indicating that this behaviour is not unique to ruffs 6/7
