Research

I’m an ecologist with a background in physics, with an interest in animal movement, foraging and population ecology. My research bridges the disciplines of movement ecology, population ecology, meteorology and computer science, addressing questions on the effects of global change on the distribution and population sizes of migratory birds.

At the Cornell Lab of Ornithology I study the migration corridors of small songbirds at the scale of a full continent, a perspective that has recently come into reach through the use of meteorological weather radar networks in animal migration studies, as well as large-scale citizen science projects. I use weather radar networks as well as individual tags to address questions in migration ecology, including when and where birds migrate, when and where birds die within the annual cycle, and how shifting patterns in mortality and recruitment of young birds cause bird abundances to change.

I also develop software tools for biologists using weather radar as a tool in their research, including the R-package bioRad for biological analysis of weather radar data.

Projects and news

NSF Macrodemography project

We currently have a job opening for a postdoctoral associate to work on the NSF project “Macro-demography of North America’s migratory birds”, which aims to ...

BirdCast

At BirdCast we develop and maintains tools that predict and monitor bird migration. These include forecast bird migration maps that predict where and when bi...

3 billion birds lost

For a large collaborative study into ongoing population changes in North America, I tracked bird biomass flows through the US since 2007 with the NEXRAD weat...

Energetics of long-distance migration

How do Dark-bellied Brent Geese (Branta bernicla bernicla) prepare in the Dutch Wadden Sea for their fast migration to Taimyr peninsula in Russia?

Flight behaviour of Common Swifts

Common Swifts (Apus apus) are specialist flyers which spend nearly their entire life on the wing. At night they show impressive (and puzzling) flight behavio...