Dr Steve Portugal, The University of Oxford

Fun afternoon giving a public lecture at the Bodleian Library, as part of their “Wonder of Birds” exhibition.

It’s been a tough few weeks. Sadly, my former postdoc boss Prof. Alan Wilson died in a small plane crash while doing fieldwork in Namibia. Alan cemented my love of biologging techology, and was a big thinker on a gargantuan scale. An eternal optimistic and a ‘doer’, with an excellent dry sense of humour. Last month, Prof. Graham Taylor passed away following an illness. Graham was another ambitious big thinker and huge in the world of flight, and was one of the primary reasons I moved to Oxford University. He will be dearly missed, and the field of biomechanics has suffered greatly with the passing of them both.

It’s been great having Prof. Craig White from Monash University visit for the past couple of weeks, and this weekend we visited Prof. Graham Martin to chat all things bird vision.

Huge team effort to get our paper “Frequency of plastic occurrence varies across phylogeny but not ecology in seabirds” accepted in Biology Letters. Thanks in particular to lead authors Stephanie Avery-Gomm, Nia Potapova and Natalie Cooper.

Postdoc Paddy (Lewin) and I enjoyed writing a Dispatches for Current Biology. Covering two recent papers about bird eye movements during flight, using homing pigeons as model species. You can read it here!

Happy our paper has been accepted in Ecology and Evolution. All about Moorhen vision. All came about thanks to a day off while doing fieldwork in the Seychelles!

Exciting day in the Flight Lab, as we welcomed a Bateleur Eagle. Part of a new collaboration with Millets Falconry.

Congrats (from L to R) Megan, Emily, Angharad, Ayse and Oliver for completing your MBiol project and vivas. You’ve done some great work this year!

Pleased our paper has been accepted in Biology Open. Titled “Allometric Scaling and Social Modulation of Resting Metabolic Rate in a Eusocial Mammal (Heterocephalus glaber)”. And thanks to the usual mole rat collaboration team at QMUL, Pretoria and California.