Профиль

Fantastic to see research led by @tirthvaishnav.bsky.social published! Countless hours watching kākā eating beautifully distilled into fascinating seasonal patterns. For birds in our city it turns out native invertebrates and non native pine cones are important year round food resources!🧪🦜

Super proud of Dr Tirth Vaishnav who is graduating this week! He started his thesis remotely and during a global pandemic, and after overcoming a host of challenges (not just limited to kākā being tricksy) he smashed it out of the park. Congratulations Tirth!

If you are interested in animal cognition and birds, a reminder to apply for this PhD opportunity in our lab! Applications close December 10th

PhD scholarship alert! Are you interested in cognitive evolution? Do you want to know how development influences cognitive traits? Do you love hanging out with birds in the forest? If the answer to these questions is yes, please apply to work with us! 1/2 🧪 www.wgtn.ac.nz/scholarships...

In our new paper (rdcu.be/eNoiJ) we tested wild toutouwai with a well established cognitive judgement bias paradigm. Much like humans and a host of other species, it turns out that wild toutouwai judge ambiguous cues favourably 🧪🐦

Yesterday I had my first catch up of the season with my favourite tuatara. For the 12 years that I’ve been keeping tabs on the toutouwai at Zealandia he has been chilling in this exact spot on warm days. A great reminder to slow down and enjoy the rare sunny spring weather!

A juvenile kekeno exploring the Te Whanagnui-a-Tara waterfront and soaking in the rays this morning. Guess it got the memo that you can’t beat Wellington on a good day…

Super privileged to have Spike the tuatara at our school seminar today to demonstrate his amazing outreach powers. Spike, Hazel, Pheobe and Shorty, the tuatara cared for at VUW in partnership with iwi, have made huge contributions to our knowledge of their species (handled under permit by carer)

I am in awe of anyone who has an up-to-date website and news feed for their research. It has taken me four years to finally write one paragraph and post it....

Time flies when you’re researching birds…I never was one to keep a diary as a kid, and it turns out that I’m not much better at it as an adult! For the past few years this site has been sorely neglected while I’ve been navigat…thinkingbehaviour.org

Not to be a cliche, but you really can’t beat Wellington (dog walks) on a still and clear winter day. I can even hear kākā yelling from the pines way in the distance. A great reminder that we live in a city where biodiversity is making a comeback.

So cool to find out that a population of this small but mighty kiwi has been hanging on in the South Island!

My super talented friend Des Rusk has launched his own clothing label. Ethical merino clothes that are classics that are designed to last a lifetime. Check out his online store here: longform.co #foreverfashion seems like something that a lot of folk on here might love!

LongformLongform pieces are designed for a lifetime, not a season. Using the finest merino for all-season comfort, these are refined staples that will never see the back of your wardrobe.longform.co

New toutouwai paper out today, led by Dr Tas Vámos! Individual toutouwai have specific preferences for where they cache prey - turns out birds that prefer spreading their caches widely also have more accurate spatial memory performance! royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

The illustrated ‘Just So’ series in @nzgeo.bsky.social is a total delight! The very talented @rebekahwhite.bsky.social and Giselle Clarke have outdone themselves with their piece on memory in the December issue It even features my favourite old (toutouwai) guy Spark! www.nzgeo.com/stories/forg...

Forget me notIf our memories make us who we are, what’s it like to have a different type of memory entirely? What can animals remember? Do goldfish have a memory longer than three seconds? And can plants remember ...www.nzgeo.com

Storm watching and listening to thunder, while also sitting in the shade to avoid a sunburn…

Very cool to see the first PhD paper from former VUW Honours student Daisy! So lovely to see students fledge the nest to go and do new and exciting things!

Cilla breaks down our new paper, lead by the amazing Fin Johnson! We took a deep dive into archival and map sources of mātauranga to reveals places where kākā were once abundant. We suggest these spots should be a priority for future translocations, to help restore biocultural relationships

1. Time for a kākā appreciation post! As far as New Zealand parrots go, kea and kākāpō can steal the limelight, but the forest-dwelling kākā deserve our attention too. Like many species in Aotearoa New Zealand, kākā are threatened by introduced predators and have disappeared from many places. 🧵

Bet it is the Orca youth bringing back salmon hats, just like gen Z is bringing back the style of my teenage years. Fashion alway recycles

Awesome research led by a @manaakiwhenua.bsky.social team that I helped out with last year! Here’s hoping that our scrambling through gorse covered slopes in south Wellington leads to new approaches to reduce cat predation on #urbanwildlife