| Phil Battley | David Melville | Rob Schuckard | Adrian Riegen | Bob Gill | Brian McCaffery | Theunis Piersma |
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
Phil is a zoology lecturer in the Ecology Group, Massey University, New Zealand. Most of his work has been on knots (both Red Knot and Great Knot) and Bar-tailed Godwits. His main interests are in how birds manage to migrate vast distances, and what the consequences of individual variation in migratory behaviour are. His research spans ecology, ecophysiology and demographics. Phil is involved in the Ornithological Society of New Zealand and is the principal investigator in their wader movements project. Phil is a part of the shorebird demographics working group, the Global Flyway Network.
| Research interests | Publications | Academic CV |
DovedaleDavid was formerly the director of World Wide Fund for Nature in Hong Kong. During his time there he helped develop the now world-famous Mai Po marshes. Since moving to New Zealand David has become very involved in wader work through the Ornithological Society of New Zealand. He manages the OSNZ wader movements project, and organised the 2005 Australasian Shorebird Conference.
Photo (right): David Melville (left) and Rob Schuckard (right) setting a mistnet, while Keith Woodley (Miranda Shorebird Centre, NZ) looks on.Rob emigrated from the Netherlands to New Zealand in 1989, and has been involved in shorebird studies ever since. Rob leads the banding work for the OSNZ in the South Island with a particular interest in Farewell Spit. Elsewhere on the flyway, Rob has joined expeditions to Kamchatka and Chukotka peninsulas in Russia.
Adrian has been actively catching and banding waders in the Auckland region of New Zealand for the past twenty years. He is very involved in the Miranda Naturalists Trust and the New Zealand Wader Study Group, as well as the Ornithological Society of New Zealand. As well as being involved in catching waders, Adrian collates wader counts for the North Island. Adrian was instrumental in helping set up a shorebird sister-site agreement between Miranda, New Zealand, and Yalu Jiang, China, where thousands of New Zealand godwits refuel on northward migration.
Bob is a biologist with the US Geological Survey (formerly part of the US Fish and Wildlife Survice). He has a long history of working on breeding and migrating shorebirds, particularly in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and mountains near the coastal belt in Alaska. Through his work on species that migrate along the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, Bob has had a long involvement with researchers in Asia and Australasia. He is currently on the Shorebird Working Group for the EAAF.
| Selected publications |
Brian is a shorebird biologist working mainly on the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge, in western Alaska. Lured into shorebird biology by the (at the time) virtually unknown Bristle-thighed Curlew, Brian has a special interest these days in the breeding biology and conservation of Bar-tailed Godwits in Alaska and along the East Asian-Australasian Flyway.
Theunis Piersma is an evolutionary biologist and one of the foremost shorebird biologists in the world. He has established a large and productive research programme on why shorebirds distribute themselves the way they do, on local to global scales. His research blends behaviour and physiology, and covers foraging ecology, energetics, body composition, metabolism, and benthic ecology. He is acknowledged as the authority on Red Knots, and even has a subspecies named after him. Theunis has set up some of the best laboratory facilities for shorebird research (at the Netherlands Insitute for Sea Research), enabling detailed experimental work to complement field research. He first visited New Zealand in 1990 for the International Ornithological Congress, during which time he made the first studies into the diet of knots in this country, using a tomato can and household sieve as technical equipment. Theunis has strong research links with Australia and New Zealand, particularly through benthos and shorebird studies in Northwest Australia, global demographic monitoring on godwits and knots (read about the Global Flyway Network), and fuelling and flight capacity of migrant godwits travelling to and from New Zealand.
| Selected publications |