Movement Ecology

We are interested in understanding how cockatoos move about and exploit the urban environments, and the cognition that might be involved in this, often termed "spatial cognition". You can check out our openly accessible published paper on this topic here

Over the winter of 2024, our team tagged over 350 cockatoos across Canberra and Sydney with our in-house developed 'limpet tags' that give us GPS data. We stick these small flat tags onto the lower back feathers of habituated birds, meaning they drop off in a time-span of days to weeks with minimal impact for the birds. This is revealing some fascinating insights into their movement patterns, and we are deep in the analysis now. Stay tuned!