Come work with me!

UPDATE 2016-03-29: I have a couple of great applicants and I shall be choosing between those two. Currently waiting for a reference. Thank you everyone for your interest. Everyone who applied will be contacted shortly.

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Yes. Literally. Come work with me on the superb fairy-wrens in Australia during my next field season - I need a field assistant.


The big picture

First the big picture. The field site is based in Canberra, so you are not cut off from civilisation, but it's not the most exciting city on the planet. It's going to be 2-3 months (with the upper limit of 3 months imposed by the visa restrictions). Start date mid-August or early-September 2016, this depends a bit on the weather conditions and how much training the person will need. It's paid and I'm working out if we have any budget for extra help, for instance with travel costs - I'd encourage people to apply for external grants though and I will be happy to provide assistance with that.


I need someone to help me out with behavioural observations and collection of field data, with focus on male courtship displays and individual identification.


What would you be expected to do?
 
The field assistant would spend a lot of time searching for birds, listening out for birds, watching birds, chasing birds, losing birds and finding birds again (hopefully). They will need to be able to spot and follow small birds through the bush, which - if you haven't tried it - is much harder than it sounds. Much, much harder. Good eyesight and hearing help.

While you are following a particular bird you also need to be able to spot and ID any other birds based on their colour band combination. Experience with binoculars helps here and you need to be able to tell the colours apart (and they are not always as clear as you might want them to be). Focus needs to be maintained during trials as it's very easy to miss birds - they are sneaky little buggers.


To consider...

Hopefully you can gauge from the above description that while this work can be really fun (you are outside bird watching after all!), it can also get a bit frustrating and tedious if you keep losing the bird and have to start over and over again. I need someone who can cope with that, someone enthusiastic and motivated, who won't get grumpy with me after a couple of hours - we will spend lots of time together and I really want this to be enjoyable and beneficial to both parties. You will of course get to meet the rest of the superb fairy-wren team and I am happy to introduce you to the folk I know at ANU, but you'd spend the majority of your time with me.

Decent level of general fitness is required too. While my field site is lovely (we have toilets, water fountains and even a cafe!), it is fairly big (~80 ha) and it is tiring to walk/run around the whole day. Some birds have fairly big territories and you might need to walk back and forwards several time while searching for the birds/following them. They don't tend to sit still much. Additionally, maintaining the high levels of focus during the trials will take their toll too.

Due to the timing/visa restrictions the time available for training will be limited - bird experience would be an advantage. It really helps if you know how to use binoculars, can spot and read colour bands on small birds and have a feel for what the bird might do next. Good peripheral vision does wonders for bird spotting. General field experience is crucial - you need to be sure you can do it, but also that you want to do it. And in order to know you want to do it, you must understand what it's like to do this type of work. If you don't like being outside, get impatient or tire very easily you will probably hate chasing after the fairy-wrens.


Get in touch

I this sounds like something you'd like to do, or if you have any questions you can get in touch with me through here or my Twitter or you can email me at g.k.hajduk@sms.ed.ac.uk. A CV and a cover letter/email explaining why you'd like to work with me and telling me a little bit more about yourself and your experience, so I can gauge the fit would be sufficient for now. There is no hard deadline at the moment, as I want to find the right person for the job, but I'd like this sorted within 2 months, so if you think you'd be perfect for the job don't put it off for too long.



UPDATE: If you email me, I will email you back confirming I got your message. If you don't hear from me within a couple of working days, try again - your email might have gotten eaten by my spam filters. Please confirm that you are eligible for a visa.

Also, I was asked about the selection process. At the moment I am going to wait for a few applications. Then I will compare said applications. I will likely get in touch with some of the applicants to have a chat (Skype).

(If you need a deadline - I would suggest to email within the next two weeks, as this is likely to generate quite a bit of interest + you shouldn't need lots of time to assemble the "application".)

Fieldwork: Almost there!

I have a couple of more trials to do on Saturday morning and then I should be done with collecting data for this season. Two months went past really quickly. I'm glad I extended my stay too, I would have been short of time otherwise.

I thought I'd show you another one of my pretty boys. Say hi to Timor (TMR):

He is a curious little guy :]

Fieldwork: Never work with animals

I think it's probably even more true for wild animals.

It's not even that the little buggers are not doing what I want them to do, they are simply not doing much at all. During multiple focal watches absolutely nothing happens, the birds just forage and preen themselves.

This means that data collection has been going rather slowly and I started to get a little bit stressed - what if I don't get enough data? I know it's not the end of the world, but I feel committed: I'm investing hours and hours of my time here (including on weekends) and feeling a little bit of pressure that I don't have much to show for it. I'm still learning a lot while I'm here, but something tangible would be nice, especially that this time would have been otherwise spend on results-producing analyses.

I know that I can complete my PhD without these data... Yet, somehow, I know it will feel just a little bit like a failure if I don't get the data. The impostor syndrome is hiding just around the corner, pocking it's ugly head out.


Decision has been made - I'm going to extend my stay by a couple of weeks, till the end of October. Hopefully that will be enough. I shall find out I guess! Now onto flights re-booking and accommodation-searching.


To illustrate how slow and late everything in the field is - some of our males are still not through their moult!

Look at that scruffy face!

Fieldwork: Displays

My fieldwork centers around male courtship displays and their variability. Only males that have finished their moult, i.e. only males that are "fully" blue, display. I've been even told that there have been males that started displaying immediately after they shook off their last brown head feathers.

grWM after a moult - fully blue.

Males display to their social partners, but they will also travel to other territories in order to display to females resident on those territories. Displays are a form of an advertisement - they never result in immediate copulation, but males can promote themselves and maybe, just maybe, the females will be impressed enough to choose them as their extra-pair partner during one of their forays.

While displaying male attempts to hide his brown wings and belly from female's view - he tucks those parts under the black feathers. Black creates the perfect background for the iridescent blue of the head and cheeks. Male then raises and fans the blue feathers - his head looks a bit odd during the display, as if it were flattened. Makes me think about cartoon cats squished by pianos.

GnwG displaying - isn't he handsome?

Nice view of the fanned and flattened blue feathers.

Males often chase the females, either in addition to the display or sometimes instead of it. I think the reaction of the female and that of the resident male plays a role here - maybe if the male can't display "in peace" he chooses to chase? It could also be that less experienced males chase more - we are not sure at the moment. One thing I do know is that those chases can be really intense and take IDing of the birds to a whole new level. Dear fairy-wrens, please stop the chasing and display gallantly.

In a small proportion of displays males carry yellow petals or small yellow flowers. This makes the male very easy to spot - I guess getting attention is exactly what he wants! It also looks unbelievably cute. I'm still trying to get a good photo of this, but since it's fairly rare and the wrens are hard to photograph as it is I'm not doing so great. My best one so far is below and you can just about see the yellow flower... It's really there, I swear!

GnwG with a yellow flower in his beak.

Another interesting aspect of the display is the "seahorse" flight. Again, it doesn't happen all the time, probably because it is energetically costly. I watched a few males do it and they only manage it for a short distance after which they land in a bush and pant with their beaks open, poor little fellas. The nature of this flight is hard to explain, but the name makes perfect sense if you see a fairy-wren do it - they really look like seahorses!

Let me try to describe it. A male attempting the seahorse flight flies in a straight line bobbing up and down, undulating, changing his body position from horizontal to vertical and back. The female would be able to see the back of the male, so he tucks in all the brown feathers, exposing only the black and blue to her. While in vertical position the tail is pointing downward and the bird looks hunched up. The shape and the undulations make them look like seahorses. It is an odd and awkward sight, it doesn't look like something a bird is meant to do. I have never seen a photo of the seahorse... I might try drawing a sketch if I see the flight a few more times.

Fieldwork: Moult

The vast majority of male superb fairy-wrens moult into an eclipse plumage for the winter - they go brown (except for their tails). Now that spring has come they are moulting back! It takes them a while to turn fully blue.

I thought I'd show you a few photos, so you can get an idea of the process. In the first photo you can see a male that hasn't sta

RrbR in eclipse plumage - completely brown

Blue feathers appear around the beak first. Have a look at the cheeks of this moulting male.

YYbw starting to moult

YYbw with a few more blue feathers on his face

Then gradually the rest of the face fills in. Blue feathers appear on the top of the head as well as cheeks. The feathers still-to-be-moulted look scruffy.

Face is blue, but the back of the head is still brown

And finally the male is moulted, blue and ready to start displaying!

Fully moulted blue male

Fieldwork: Superb fairy-wrens

This is a tiny bit of my fieldsite. Not too shabby, right?

In case you were wondering this is how the superb fairy-wrens (Malurus cyaneus) look like.

The females are brown, with orange beaks and loral stripes.

 

 

 

Say hello to young MOno

Males in breeding plumage are striking blue and black. The males in eclipse plumage look pretty much like females, but have blue tails, black beaks and black loral stripes. Their faces remind me of a Zorro mask :]

Fieldwork: First week done!

Ooooooph. This was a long week.

I have had a few issues after arrival. My luggage got lost and it took a couple of days to get it. I have congratulated my past-self on packing a bunch of clothes in the hand luggage. What my past-self didn't take into account though is that all those clothes are brightly coloured, which is not ideal when you are trying to sneak up on birds!

There have been a few issues with the house I'm staying at, nothing major, and everything is slowly getting sorted, but even little things (like lack of heating when it's below zero at night and the house is not insulated) can get to me when I'm tired. It also turned out that paperwork wasn't quite there yet and so it took a little while to get this sorted and get me onto the University system. People at ANU have been absolutely lovely and very helpful though, so at least I didn't feel completely alone in a new place - thank you everybody!*

The beginnings of fieldwork have been tough-going. Learning to ID the superb fairy-wrens by their calls is difficult. While I can pick out the main song, the background chatter still eludes me. Thornbills and scrubwrens seem set on confusing me too. On the bright side, my peripheral vision has been improving quickly and I can now pick out fairy-wren shaped objects quickly. Things are harder when it's windy, as not only I can't hear the wrens, but every moving leaf looks like a bird. All in all, I'm happy with the progress and cautiously optimistic that things will keep improving.

So far the biggest challenge is finding the birds; once I got them I can figure out the colour bands most of the time (or at least get close enough). Certain colours are similar, especially in bright sunlight, e.g. azure and white look very similar to each other and can also be confused with a band that has very thin white and blue stripes. It doesn't help that some colours have faded over the years, for example a red band might look like red, but also like orange, mauve or even white. Each bird has three colour bands and so each ID is like a little puzzle!


Oh, and have I mentioned that it's spring here?

Hard not to smile when you can see this outside your window!

*they are unlikely to ever read this, but hopefully they know how much I appreciate their kindness

Fieldwork: Season one

I'm off to Australia again, but this time I'm going to spend six weeks there (you might recall I went to visit for two weeks in January/February). I should be landing tomorrow night and starting fieldwork asap.

The rough plan is to carry out behavioural observations of male courtship displays and assess their variability with respect to certain female characteristics. I want to obtain data on particular superb fairy-wren individuals and so a very detail plan cannot be made at the moment as I need to see what individuals are available once I get there - all birds need to pair up and settle for the breeding season first. Last time I checked things were still in flux.

I'm planning to spend the first couple of weeks mainly on getting to know the field site and the birds. I need to be able to not only find the birds and follow them, but also to identify birds by their colour rings (nearly all birds on the field site are banded, each with a unique colour combination - so we know which bird is which!). This means practice, practice, practice!

I expect it's going to be quite tough to start with. Hopefully as my brain builds up a superb fairy-wren search image, both when it comes to spotting the birds and recognising their calls, I will be able to find the fairy-wrens easier and also have that split second longer to look at them. This is one of those rather frustrating situations, where you need to stick it out till it finally clicks. One day you just can't do it! and the next it works (seemingly by magic). I don't know whether there is any way to speed up the process, other than spending as much time as possible on trying to get things right. Fingers crossed my brain gets there quickly!

Fieldwork. Of sorts

I have just spent two full weeks in Australia. Yes, it’s not much, considering how long it takes to get there from the UK. 

The trip was an odd one. The length was dictated by several factors - I wanted to get out and meet my Australian supervisor, as well as see the set up and my study system, in order to get a better idea of what I’m dealing with and discuss my PhD project in a bit more detail. On the other hand though it’s quite late in the year and the breeding season is pretty much over by now, hence there wasn’t much point in staying down under for a prolonged period of time.

I think that the trip was a successful one. The people are great there and the supervisor was happy to share his insights about all kinds of things. It was helpful to see the birds I’m working on and get a look at the field site. I hope it will aid me in fleshing out my ideas for next season’s fieldwork (behavioural observations, yay!), so that I’ll be off to a good start when I come back in September. Additionally, I feel like I managed to do some networking and for the first time it came easy to me - maybe it’s just the atmosphere there in general, but everyone was so chatty, nice and helpful that having a conversation was a pleasure.

If anybody I have met over there ever reads this I’d like to say thank you for all your hospitality. I really appreciate it and I hope our paths cross in the future and maybe one day I can return the favour.

On top of a successful PhD trip I also managed to spent some time bird watching, chasing the wild parrots (I’m a bit of a parrot geek). Some of the photos of Oz wildlife below if you fancy seeing them.

Crimson rosella

     

Superb fairy-wren chick

      

Wallaby

Sulphur crested cockatoos on a bird feeder