Return to the Kalahari

It seems fitting that after I have handed in my thesis that I return to the place that has been a constant in my life for almost seven year: the Kuruman River Reserve. In leaving the Fitz so soon after handing-in I feel that I have drawn a curtain on a period of my life prematurely. However, as sad as this is, I was reminded that life is change. I am heading to the Kalahari to help out on a really cool project, studying fork-tailed drongos (Dicrurus adsimilis). I get to help Dr Tom Flower with some really interesting experiments investigating kleptoparasitic behaviour in these smart little birds. I will also be helping out with the Pied Babbler Project, and so I get to spend time with some of the birds I got to know during my PhD. So, all-in-all it is going to be really good fun. I also have to turn my thesis chapters into publications and apply for post-docs. If anyone sees any cool behavioural ecology post-docs then please email me, Kalahari internet makes looking for jobs hard!

A list of some of the papers produced on fork-tailed drongos:

Flower, Child & Ridley (2013) The ecological economics of kleptoparasitism: pay-offs from self-foraging versus kleptoparasitism Journal of Animal Ecology 82:245-255

Child, Flower & Ridley (2012) Investigating a link between bill morphology, foraging ecology and kleptoparasitic behaviour in the fork-tailed drongo Animal Behaviour 84:1013-1022

Flower & Gribble (2012) Kleptoparasitism by attacks versus false alarm calls in fork-tailed drongos. Animal Behaviour 83:403-410

Flower (2012) Fork-tailed drongos use deceptive mimicked alarm calls to steal food. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 2011 278, 1548-1555. 

Ridley & Raihani (2007) Facultative response to a kleptoparasite by the cooperatively breeding pied babbler Behavioural Ecology 18:324-330