For a long time, I’ve been fascinated by the variation in breeding systems, morphology, habitats and other general lifestyles of waders. When I first learnt about light-level geolocation as a technique for tracking the non-breeding movements...
With a little bit of ‘basic math’, Russian biologist Eldar Rakhimberdiev shows how changes in seasonal survival may be used as a tool to detect problems in bird populations. ‘A dip in survival during a certain period or in a certain place, means the population...
In late winter 2013/14 the crow fieldwork crew of the Wolf Lab at the Evolutionary Biology Centre in Uppsala, Sweden, started planning the next field season. The goal was to sample two dozen hooded and carrion crow nestlings from sites in Sweden and Germany...
avianbiology
24 October 2014
Male testes come in all shapes and sizes. Male mammals usually have two testes that are equal in size but birds, for some unknown reason, usually have one testis bigger than the other, and it is often said that the left testis is larger than the right.
avianbiology
14 October 2014
Modern-day puffins and auks have long been recognized as environmental indicator species for ongoing faunal shifts, and fossil records now indicate that ancient relatives were similarly informative.
avianbiology
10 October 2014
Every year, billions of birds move across the Earth to reach their wintering and breeding grounds. One of these mass movement members is the willow warbler, a long-distance migrant that winters in sub-Saharan Africa and breeds in northern Europe and Asia.
avianbiology
9 October 2014
The numbers of wintering urban birds have increased three times and the number of water birds have increased ten times in Finland since the end of 1950s...
avianbiology
7 October 2014
In this study we show that the availability of optimal-sized prey (between 0.5-5 kg) is a crucial driver of foraging behaviour, breeding success and distribution patterns of the Golden Eagle Aquila chrysaetos L. on a continental scale.
avianbiology
18 September 2014
In this impressive long-term study the authors explore if common goldeneyes can track environmental cues and adjust their breeding in response to a changing climate. At their study site in Finland the ice-out date has advanced with 2 weeks during their 24 yr study...
avianbiology
4 August 2014
A big challenge for migration ecologists is to resolve how environmental conditions along the migration routes of birds affect their migration timing and individual fitness. Read the authors own story behind this recent Open Access paper...
Pages
