Oliver Padget

I am interested in the learning and cognitive processes that underly all aspects of bird behaviours, but especially their impressive space-use. How, for example, do birds learn to navigate, and what is the extent of their navigational ability?  A lot of my work involves using modern tracking technology to investigate the movements of highly mobile bird species, such as Manx shearwaters and European nightjars, to look at how their movements and space-use vary over their lives. I’m also interested in what information birds inherit or learn and how these streams of information are processed to result in the impressive population-level migratory patterns. How and why do birds use these mechanisms to return to breed so close to where they fledged? I also love bird observatories and rare birds.