@doreenbirds
PhD candidate in ecology, mixing community science, genetics, physiology, conservation and animal behavior to understand adaptation in urban White Ibises. Did you see my tagged ibises? Report them here: https://forms.gle/aNMyRCexTdWsrgc19 🏳️🌈🇫🇷
So honored to have received the Best 15 Minutes Presentation award at the Integrative Conservation Conference. I don't always think of myself as a conversationist and don't always feel valid attending these meetings, so this was a surprise!
If you work on corvid ecology, behaviour, cognition, or conservation, this might be useful for you 👇
I’ve just published CORVIDATA in Scientific Data 🐦
doi.org/10.1038/s415... (1/4)
How dare they!
Thank you! They really are, what a wonderful specie <3
It's such a privilege to get to spend my days looking at what my tagged birds do when confronted to this strange box. I am getting to know them I catch myself look at ibis A and think "you remind me of ibis B". I am excited to quantify how their individual traits impact how they treat the puzzle!
Directly from the field: watch this ibis figure out how to solve our automated puzzle box
Please share share share! I launched a crowdfunding for my project, I need your help!
Note: if you become a backer, you will be notified with bonus avian encounters at the parks! Wanna see spoonbills, cranes and bald eagles? Even a tiny donation will help me <3 experiment.com/projects/cit...
A good start of the field season, deployment successful, ibises are interested in the puzzle! We still have some adjustments to make but hopefully we will get started on the actual data collection very shortly!
Very excited to announce that I will be presenting my work for the Urban Ibis Project at the #BOU2026 @bou.org.uk along with great researchers who have directly inspired my research. See you there !
Fascinating!! Also a topic that has been on my mind for a while. In fact, I will be deploying puzzle boxes to test problem-solving in urban and non-urban flocks of ibises this winter. It took a couple years to develop my boxes, I am excited to see if we can find similar patterns in our birds!
Spooky Month-ed so hard I became a candidate, Yay!
Preliminary results on our ibis community structure based off citizen science data is here!
What we see is that communities are quite distinct from one another, although there seem to be some individuals that bridge them together! Given how many ibises there are, it was lucky for us to detect that!
Small urban colonies HAVE established but we did not know who was using them. Now it looks like they may be used by some individuals that have dropped their yearly migration when they urbanized. That is not surprising, but it is cool to see it happen!
I had been told that ibises traditionally migrate to vast Everglades colonies to breed. Even when they winter in urban parks!
But this map suggests some urban birds may now complete their entire breeding cycle in urban habitats.
The idea started with a paper indicating that bill color in american White Ibises is a good predictor for breeding state:
🔴 Bright red = breeding ready
⬛ Black patches = eggs laid/chicks hatched
With each shift in color, we can track the ibis life cycle—no nest disturbance required.
🪶 New map, new questions: I am making an attempt at using community scientists' photos to link movement with breeding status. Here is what I am learning so far:
and apply that transformation to patches taken from their bill. It has been helpful but I did have to go a bit further and normalize brightness and saturation as well. I have also been measuring the proportion of their bill that is black.
I have ran into issues since all photos are taken using different devices and under different light conditions. But I have taken advantage of ibise's white plumage to normalize their color. Very simply, I look at how white is their white, turn that into actual white (R255, G255, B255)
As their nesting progresses, eggs are laid and chicks grow up, their bill slowly develops and black patch and slowly becomes duller. Thus, how their bills look tell us a lot about their breeding activities! I have been working on using community scientists' photos to estimate breeding state.
That's where the community scientists' submissions come into play: likely because of their asynchronous breeding, ibises have developed a mean to communicate to potential partners about their status. Individuals that are ready to mingle develop a vivid red bill.
We do see a stark reduction in urban ibis populations at their urban "wintering" grounds in the summer, but they're not necessarily all gone. Plus some urban colonies have started emerging, which bids the question: do these urban breeders stick around urban parks in the summer?
For instance, a big factor that explains movement and distribution is whether or not they are currently BREEDING. Ibises presumably have a long breeding season (march-october though we'll get back to that later). When they do, they are thought to join big colonies in the Everglades (2/n)
Sharing an article I wrote about vertebrate scavengers, the topic of my Master's thesis. I worked in Madhya Pradesh in Central India, studying vertebrate scavenger communities in two different protected areas - one with an abundance of vulture, one without.
roundglasssustain.com/wild-vault/s...
A golden jackal faces down white-rumped vultures in Kanha National Park, India
The first two pages of an article titled "Beyond Boundaries: Reimagining Wildlife Tourism in India" by Bhavya Iyer in the April 2024 issue of Sanctuary Asia magazine.
touching moss
Hey #ecology bluesky! I'm Bhavya, a PhD student interested in spatial ecology + people's values towards nature. I'm a wildlife biologist, birder, and nature writer! I mostly like to write about my travels+research.
#science #nature
To your left, what a White Ibis wing typically looks like: white feathers with black tip only for the last primaries. To your right, a special individual captured last winter. We captured over 500 birds for this project over almost 2 decades and had never seen that! #ornithology #birds #biodiversity
Starting a VERY low-budget community science project on White Ibises was a bold move considering the scale of their movement, but it paid off! All of our sightings outside of capture sites came from community scientists, who found our birds as far as Orlando and Tampa!
Hi all! I'm Aoife, a plant lover+ PhD candidate in the Anthropology and Integrative Conservation Program at UGA. I work with farmers in the Colombian Amazon to explore synergies between shifting agriculture, livelihoods, and biodiversity conservation.
What's your favorite plant? 🌲
photo of a white ibis standing in a lawn and carrying a yellow wing tag showing the number 055 written in balck
Hi! I am Doreen, a PhD student working on urban adaptation in White Ibises. My studies incorporate genetics, conservation, behavior, and a community science project that involves many passionate birders! Have you seen my tagged ibises? Use the link in bio to report your sighting!
pic:Neelya Eiram
