Dr swift parrot

Omg, Serbia AND Brazil?! What a day

Yay for the Serbian students!

Video of a regent parrot mum leaving her nest after feeding the kids - old river red gums are critical habitat for these birds but they’re under threat from logging and water stress

Yesterday I drove past a huge paddock of Billy buttons and it was so unbelievably gorgeous

The last regent parrot of the season at Wyperfield NP - happy chubby baby 🧡 We checked ~70 nests since last Tuesday and we are very tired 🥲

Today I successfully did not step on and crush this gorgeous nest of a black-fronted dotterel - but holy moly, it was a near miss

This video shows the inside of a regent parrot nest - it shows an active nest (the three clean eggs) laid as a replacement for the other eggs that got broken probably by a predator - this is a big, old, stressed red gum on a saline wetland that’s not had a good flood in a long while 😭

Been visiting some gorgeous places along the Murray River while doing regent parrot nest checks this week

Regent parrot chick sitting on my finger with the cliffs of the Murray River in the background - gorgeous birds in a nice place

Day 3 of regent parrot nest checks was about getting across a 5m wide creek that was to deep to wade across lol

Day 3 of regent parrot nest checks and look at this little cutie 🥰

Another day of regent parrot nest checks - look at this gorgeous thing 🧡

Day one of regent parrot nest checks! At Euston today and processed 9 nests worth of babies!! So adorable (plus we got branded work shirts now!)

Important reminder of why these are called beautiful firetails 🥰

I’m very excited because the regent parrot breeding season has started and in a couple of weeks you’ll get to see these little goofballs again

These last few weeks I’ve had the good fortune of seeing some pretty spectacular places while we have been chasing scrub birds in Werrikimbee, Gibraltar Range and Border Range National Parks. Going outside is really good for the soul

We had a great week up in the border range last week where we caught our 10th and 11th scrub birds for a genetic study, plus some amazing other creatures and views 🧡

Wanna see a horrible video of something that most ppl never see? This is a rufous scrub bird singing his head off in the most open habitat I’ve ever seen them in. Normally they’re totally invisible in thick scrub - this one is still fairly invisible

in case you missed it!! new release of @kudelka.bsky.social’s rusted-on bingo tea towels, with $5 from every tea towel sold going to the Jon Kudelka Fund for Glioblastoma Research at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research get yours now!! www.kudelkashop.com/product/rust...

Another preprint with Amy Carboon and John Endler on light microhabitat use in Victoria’s riflebird using hemispheric canopy photography, display activity data, and sun track simulations. In short, males display in the VERY early morning under dim light. ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

I forgot to share these very cute pictures of a brown gerygone that we caught the other week - look at those huge eyes 👁️👁️🤎

Prepping for the once in a thousand years El Niño? Ask a penguin! www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Such an impressive compilation of data from tracked birds across (most of) the global range and diversity of Whimbrel in this new collaborative paper in Ibis: look at the map - so many major transoceanic movements onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Read the paper (open access) here 🔗 doi.org/10.1029/2026...

Another key finding: study duration matters! Had our study been only 3 years (a typical PhD), we could have concluded ingestion was rising, falling, or flat, purely by chance. 🔵 = plastic decrease ⚪️ = no change 🟠 = plastic increase

Each year “the record” is broken, despite our team thinking “surely the birds can’t possibly fit anymore plastics in their stomachs!” But then, in 2025, we found 894 plastics inside a single chick that was only 90 days old 💔 📸 caption: worst chicks in 2010, 2015, 2021, 2025

One of the most important plots we’ve ever made helped us answer a question we’re constantly asked: “is the amount of ingested plastic increasing?” Answer: yes, there’s been a sustained and rapid increase in #plastics in Sable #Shearwaters since 2021

🚨 Record-breaking amounts of plastic are being found in seabirds. A 16-year study of sable shearwaters on Australia’s Lord Howe Island has found a sharp rise in the amount of plastic in their stomachs.

As talks on a Global Plastic Treaty continue, researchers say stronger recycling laws, including for items like bottle lids, will be vital to tackling plastic waste. Would you support a global treaty on plastics? Let us know in the comments 👇

In 2011, one bird was found with 276 pieces of plastic, weighing 64g. By 2023, that record had been smashed, with more than 400 pieces found in a single bird. The record has been broken every year since. Last year, one bird contained 894 pieces of plastic.

Check out the gorgeous vermiculation on the feathers of the rufous scrub bird - in the dense ground-cover they hide in their colours make them effectively invisible. Their camouflage is SO good that they can afford to have incredibly loud voices and predators still can’t get them

I am genuinely in love with the cranky face of rufous scrub birds - they’re genuinely the coolest little weirdos

Check out the lovely rufous patch on this scrub bird - it’s what gives them their name but 99.99% of ppl never get to see it 🤎

We caught another rufous scrub bird today and he was a little bit dumb which made it a wildly easy job (but he’s handsome too so I guess that’s ok)

New blog post!🚨 Antica Čulina tells the story of how a something that bugged them 15 years ago was finally formalised in a paper on a Risk of Bias assessment in ecological and evolutionary meta-analysis 🌍 🧪 Read the blog here 👇 buff.ly/si6MLJq

Something nice to read over your Sunday coffee - we just published an updated gang-gang cockatoo chapter with @birdsoftheworld.bsky.social Read about these gorgeously silly birds - some cute videos in there too. birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/...

One thing about scrub birds that I think is pretty cool is that they have a little shield over their nostrils which I suspect helps them prevent getting twigs up their noses as they scramble around in the super dense scrub they love 🛡️ it makes their nostrils point backwards 👃

We have been out catching rufous scrub-birds again this week which requires a blood sacrifice to the forest gods for success

For Canberra’s gang-gang Cockatoos, habitat quality isn't just about having hollows, it's about having the right hollows. New research by DBRG @teamswiftparrot.bsky.social, lead by Stacey Taylor, highlights why protecting known nesting trees matters. Read the article: bit.ly/gangganghollows

Speckled Warbler (from southeast Australia). #BirdOfTheDay #birds #WildOz

New estimate of Elon Musk’s death toll just dropped www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Congratulations to our friend Nicole on her new book - get this for the kids in your life!

Preorders are now open! The first book in the new SNIFF SQUAD series, "Maya Follows Her Nose" can now be pre-ordered from UWA Publishing! 🐨🐶📚🥳 uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/may...

ICYMI

we just published some new research! Gang-gang cockatoos love living in urban Canberra, but they are very fussy about the hollows they select as nests. Only a fraction of hollows are the right shape for these picky parrots! read about it here: academic.oup.com/jue/article/...

Huge property for sale in Tasmania in core swift parrot breeding habitat if there’s any philanthropists out there seeking to protect some birds and bush! Lake Leake is an important site for parrots but the broader landscape is being savagely logged www.realestate.com.au/property-lif...

Our latest: Hummingbird and hawkmoth wing shape: Analyzing functional convergence in analogous structures, by Benton Walters @bristolpalaeo.bsky.social, with help from Yuming Liu, Iman Fadel @ferronhg.bsky.social @emilyrayfield.bsky.social and myself.

The choughs must be building a new nest, and frankly they look like shit 🤣🥲 such good birds

1/ The world's songbirds sing in just 8 basic sounds. And where a bird lives decides which ones it uses. My first PhD paper is out now in @science.org (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aee6239) Here is what we found:

Delighted that we have just published a new profile for the regent parrot with @birdsoftheworld.bsky.social - check it out for a nice read about a fabulous bird birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/...