Welcome to the BirdLab!

Welcome to the BirdLab! We love birds. Birds are magnificent surviving dinosaurs who persist on land, air and sea. Birds lay eggs, care for their young, maintain feathers, evolve and – in addition to their spectacular behavioural biology – are also excellent bioindicators for environmental health. Our research specialisation is prenatal communication between mothers and embryos. We are also known for our use of new technologies to help save threatened species. We use in-nest video cameras, drones and GPS tags to monitor individuals and have developed facial recognition software to keep track of unique wild animals non-invasively, from a photo. Using bioacoustics and transcriptomics, we measure when and how vocalisations are learned. At landscape scales, our automated recorder stations measure biodiversity. We are motivated to give females a voice in science and society. Therefore, we study both female and male behaviour with a special interest in how daughters and sons learn their calls and songs.

The BirdLab is international! The map shows our study areas in Australia, Austria, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and the Galapagos Islands.

Please contact us if you are interested in working with us.