Dr Steve Portugal, The University of Oxford

Sad to wave goodbye to pigeon whisperer Lara, as her project finishes off. Thankfully Lara has a new position in the Department, so it’s not really goodbye.

Pleased to welcome two new MSc students to our lab, Tayla Sanders (right) and Molly Cordal (left), who will be working on mole rat movement and cuckoo egg physiology, respectively.

Molly Cordall

Tayla Sanders

Congratulations to our PhD student Lucy Taylor who passed her viva today with Minor Corrections!

We’re looking forward to welcoming some new postgrads to the lab next week – Jack Thirkell, Ceyclia Watrobska, Molly Cordall and Tayla Sanders. More info to follow!

Congratulations to Masters students Rhianna and Miranda on submitting your theses. A couple of interesting papers being put together from the data they gathered.

Looking forward to talking at the London CEE event in September.

Pigeon experiments continue to go well, and Dan Sankey has moved on to the large group releases.

Wonderful to welcome Chris Packham back to Campus today, where he was awarded an honorary doctorate of science.

Busy fews weeks. The last couple of weeks have involved externally examining the Zoology degree scheme at Manchester, which was really interesting to see what topics other Universities cover and how they are taught. I’ve done quite a few SkpeAScientist sessions, mainly with 13-16 year olds in the States. Today our new Australian Crested Pigeons arrived which is exciting! They’ll be part of some experiments looks at social interactions, dominance and energy expenditure.

Sam is back in the field in Honduras, and Dan is very busy flying pigeons. Jenny is gearing up for some lab work with ducks in the States, and Lara is underway with pigeon respirometry experiments. Rosa is in China. Exciting! Miranda and Stephanie had a very successful trip to Illinois and are now busy analysing mountains of data. Rhianna is finishing her MSc thesis and has found some fascinating results with energy expenditure and dominance. Late summer we look forward to welcoming new PhD students Jack and Cecylia, and MSc students Tayla and Molly to our motley crew.