Dr Steve Portugal, The University of Oxford

Interested in bird vision, flight and stopping birds colliding with things, come do a PhD at Oxford. Link to advert is here!

Congrats former PhD student Hana Merchant on getting your 4th and final PhD chapter accepted, in The Journal of Experimental Biology. In this paper, we investigate how different populations of common mole rats along an aridity gradient differ in their physiology, titled “Evolutionary shifts in the thermal biology of a subterranean mammal: the effect of habitat aridity“. More to follow.

Congrats former PhD student Steph McClelland on our paper out in Biology Letters. This is Steph’s final PhD chapter and the last to get published. All about the patterns of energy expenditure during embryo development in brood parasites and their hosts. You can read it here!

Huge congrats to Will Smith and Michał Jezierski for getting their Rock Dove work accepted in Ornithology, and thank you for inviting me to be involved in the paper. More to follow.

Congrats first author Carla du Toit on our paper out in Biology Letters. Titled “Tactile bill-tip organs in seabirds suggest conservation of a deep avian symplesiomorphy”, you can read it here!

Very grateful to everyone who joined for my leaving event at RHUL. I head off to Oxford October 1st. A decade of good memories from RHUL (alas David A wasn’t at my leaving do).

The Borneo fieldcourse went well this year, with lots of exciting species seen (photos by Larissa Barker). This is the last year I teach the course, and we’re all extremely grateful to the staff at the field centre for three years of successful trips.

Congrats former MSc student on your paper out in Journal of Ornithology, showing how avian visual fields are repeatable at the individual and species level. You can read it here!

Pleased to have our paper accepted in Ibis. All about the visual fields of gulls.

Congrats former MSc student Ellie Lucas on getting your paper accepted in Journal of Ornithology. We suggest that the visual fields of birds are repeatable at the individual and species level.