Dr Steve Portugal, The University of Oxford

PhD student Rosa Gleave is busy in China, studying the critically endangered Blue-crowned Laughthrush. You can see a photo story of her current trip here!

Our new paper is out in The Science of Nature, which shows what happens to cluster flocking pigeons when they fly a long distance – they spread out. You can read it here! Congrats PhD student Dan Sankey.

To coincide with our ‘goose moon’ paper, which you can read here, I’ve written a piece for The Conversation about animal behaviour, the moon and eclipses, which can be found here! (photo, K. Witman)

Congratulations PhD Dan Sankey who just got his 2nd PhD paper accepted, in Animal Behaviour. In this paper, we show how birds compromise on speed when flying in flocks. More to follow.

We have a paper out today, in Ecology and Evolution, all about how wild geese respond physiologically to supermoon events. You can read it here!

Big congratulations to PhD student Dan Sankey for getting his first paper accepted. Two years ago all his pigeons disappeared on a routine 8km flight and flew 200+ km across the whole of London and into East Anglia, with all their loggers on. This provided an exciting opportunity to see how birds alter their spacings within a group over long flights. More to follow.

Our paper is out in PLOS Biology. A huge amount of effort, and congratulations to former PhD student Lucy Taylor for all the hard work. The paper focuses on how hard pigeons work to fly with just one other bird, and why this might be. You can read it here!

Cecylia did a great job of presenting her work (poster and talk) at the RHUL Symposium, all about the interactions between spatial memory, personality and metabolism in birds.

Our Leverhulme funded egg project starts next week, in collaboration with James Bowen at the Open University and the egg collection at the Natural History Museum Tring. We’re delighted to welcome postdoc Marie Attard to the lab group and to Royal Holloway (and thank you Leverhulme).

Absolutely thrilled/shocked to have been awarded the Bicentenary Medal by the Linnean Society of London. Endless thanks to everyone I’ve worked with over the years, and those that have supported and guided me, and huge thanks to whomever took the time to nominate me.