Phil Battley
Ecology Group
Massey University
Private Bag 11-222
Palmerston North
New Zealand
Email: p.battley@massey.ac.nz
Phone +64 6 356 9099 ext 2605
Fax +64 6 350 5623
I am an ornithologist who works mainly on the migratory biology of shorebirds (or waders). I became interested in this group of birds as a teenager partly because waders provided a rare element of surprise in an otherwise predictable birdwatching environment in New Zealand. I studied waders at university, starting with a masterate at Massey University looking at the diet and food supply of Bar-tailed Godwits, Red Knots and Pied Oystercatchers on Farewell Spit, a fantastic 30-km long sandspit at the top of the South Island. In 1997 I moved to Brisbane and Griffith University, but worked almost as far away as you can get within Australia, at Broome, in the tropical Northwest. My work focussed on the changes that occur in the bodies and behaviour of Great Knots as they migrate. Through the excellent ornithological networks that now exist along the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, I was able to collect birds before and after a migratory flight from Australia to China. This showed clearly how lean tissue in organs, in addition to fat, was broken down during flight. (See pictures)
In 2002 I worked at the Netherlands Institute for Sea Research with Theunis Piersma, mainly dissecting shorebirds from Theunis' freezer. In 2003 I came back to New Zealand again, where colleagues from the Ornithological Society and I made a large-scale survey of the invertebrates of the intertidal flats of Farewell Spit, before I started a fellowship from the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology to work on the movements and demographics of migratory shorebirds in New Zealand. I worked through the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Otago, with Richard Barker, one of New Zealand's mark-recapture specialists. After working for a short while with Mark Hauber in the School of Biological Sciences, Auckland University I obtained a lecturing job in the Ecology group at Massey University, Palmerston North (where I relocated to in May 2007).
For more on the work I have been involved in, please use the links below.
| Research interests | Publications | Academic CV | Local predator control |