Progress Update. 23rd April 2026 Sam Thompson; BOC/EGI Case Student Six months into my PhD and things are really starting to take shape. For my first couple of terms at Oxford—Michaelmas and Hilary as we call them here—one of my primary focuses has been brushing up on the literature surrounding avian vision, obstacle avoidance and flock behaviour. It is a fascinating field and much of our understanding of it is a result of work conducted […]
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Pursuing Parakeets in the Pages of the Past
The Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis) was the United States’ only native parrot[i]. It occupied a remarkably wide range, from the swamps of Florida all the way to the plains of Nebraska, where it persisted even in snow and cold. The species often occurred in cypress woods in the southeast, and amidst sycamores in the midwest, and was never found far from water. With its bright green plumage and shrill, discordant calls, the birds were hard […]
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Introducing Sam Thompson
I am a DPhil Biology student at St Edmund Hall at the University of Oxford. This year, in partnership with the British Ornithologists’ Club, I’ll be starting a PhD at the Edward Grey Institute, with the aim of developing a better understanding of the many facets of bird behaviour and physiology that lead to incidences of avian collisions with human-made structures. The project will seek to identify common traits between the most collision-prone species, with […]
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Is the Crimson-crested Turaco a species in its own right?
Originally, three turaco species were described from the Horn of Africa: the widespread White-cheeked Turaco Tauraco leucotis, the Crimson-crested Turaco T. donaldsoni, and the Ruspoli’s Turaco T. ruspolii, the latter two being endemic Ethiopian taxa. Subsequent taxonomic revisions relegated the Crimson-crested Turaco to a subspecies of the White-cheeked Turaco, and this classification is now of long standing. This revision was the result of an ambiguous interpretation of their actual ranges due to a lack of […]
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Beneath the feet of the dodo – a new ground thrush from Mauritius
The Mascarene Islands of Mauritius, Réunion and Rodrigues, situated in the southwest Indian Ocean, once harboured a number of diverse bird species, most notably the Mauritian Dodo. Unlike most other oceanic islands, the Mascarenes were in pristine condition when first discovered by humans, who recorded important but often vague details in ships’ logs and journals. The arrival of Europeans at the end of the 16th century, with their accompanying commensal animals, proved disastrous for the […]
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Poo in paradise: a week of fieldwork on Heron Island
When I decided to pursue my passion for poo at PhD level, I never imagined I would end up on Heron Island: a (very) small coral cay on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Just half a mile long, this sub-tropical island is home to a huge variety of biodiversity. So much so that David Attenborough opted to film there. Fig 1 Heron Island, credit: Andrea Estandía
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