We have a new group logo - honouring one of our key study species, the northern wheatear 😍
And of cause, this bird is also tagged with a transmitter - but the tracking devices we use for our studies are so tiny, that you can´t see them on the bird 😉
A warm welcome to @mguidotti29.bsky.social who joined our lab now as an @sfb1372.bsky.social fellow
In the next 10 months he will work on orientation 🧭
in Northern Wheatears together with @annikapeter.bsky.social
Meet Matteo!
Our new @sfb1372.bsky.social songbird orientation fellow
With a background in waterbirds, he is excited to dive deeper into migration research
Originally from 🇮🇹, he is strongly motivated to contribute to various research activities & firmly believes that lunch should never be rushed
In cooperation with RWE, we proudly announce the installation of the first #MOTUS station in an offshore wind farm (Amrumbank West) in Germany and in Europe. This will help to fill key knowledge gaps in offshore environmental monitoring. We were supported by our colleagues from Wind Energy Systems
Map showing detections of radio-tracked individual.
Skylark with radio transmitter before release.
A skylark I tagged last autumn in northernmost Germany with a #Motus transmitter (to study #pesticide effects) was now detected near our University in Oldenburg - we @migecol.bsky.social col.bsky.social now have data from 3 migration seasons for this bird!
motus.org/dashboard/#e...
#birdmigration
We’re hiring a doctoral researcher in the area of migration ecology.
The work will focus on the question of how and when migratory songbirds learn where their home is using #Motus.
Part of the Cluster of Excellence NaviSense and linked with @sfb1372.bsky.social
uol.de/job788en
#ornithology
the 5 study species: Dunnock, Northern Wheatear, European Robin, Common Redstart, Garden Warbler
NEW PUBLICATION on stopover ecology of Songbirds during spring migration: After packmor et al. 2020 (Mov Ecol) found that trans-Saharan migrants react differently to weather for migratory departure, we aked ourselves, whether this is also valid for spring migration? 🐦
a thread 🧵 on 7 hypotheses:
1. Yellow-browed Warbler tagged in 2025! 🤩
On September 24, @annikapeter.bsky.social tagged the first Yellow-browed warbler (Phylloscopus inornatus) on Helgoland in 2025 to study its migratory behaviour. Stay tuned for fascinating bird tracks!
#Motus #Tracking #Birdmigration
Meet Lasse,
He‘ll support the working group as a volunteer for the next year, hoping to learn and observe scientific work in the process. While his interests lay elsewhere beforehand, he‘s become curios about the groups work and likes to try to think along :)
This week we were at #BESMove2025, where @giovannasandretti.bsky.social presented our results on the overlooked pre-migratory flights.
The conference title of this year was "Understanding Migration", and she came back home full of fresh insights and great new connections!
Our group is now also involved in the education of future biology teachers here at the University of Oldenburg #birdringing #birdbanding #birdmigration
Great fun to teach students how to catch and handle #birds for scientific studies and how to collect and analyse fecal samples together with @giovannasandretti.bsky.social - but shocking to see how many songbirds´ droppings contain #microplastics
Meet Melanie: she´s the good soul of the working group and our secret star. Nothing works without her & everything works with her. Our technician can do everything & saves the rest of us from putting our foot in our mouths. She is also into plant conservation: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_0W...#isoetes
We are happy to announce that the excellence cluster navisense just got funded - one of the biggest achievements possible in German research funding! We will contribute to the interdisciplinary understanding of bird orientation and navigation from social perspectives, to ecology and physics.
Finally some fieldwork! It was great fun to support @giovannasandretti.bsky.social´s project tagging & sampling Northern Wheatears on the island of Norderney 😊
Introducing Georg:
Ornithologist and movement ecologist in our group, specialising in passerine migration, with a passion for warblers and chats. His work combines hands-on field methods—bird ringing and tagging—with statistical modeling using Bayesian inference frameworks in Julia, R, and Stan.
Meet @giovannasandretti.bsky.social
She moved from Brazil to start her PhD on the autumn migration of Northern Wheatears using #Motus tracking. Her passions include ecology and conservation, especially with birds.
She is excited to her first field season on Norderney in the coming weeks!
You wonder what is our research about? See this word cloud, we collected, about our perspective of scientific fields and topics.
Thiemo Karwinkel with a Motus antenna
Meet @thiemokarwinkel.bsky.social!
After PhD on ecological role of #magnetoreception in #songbirds, he continued researching offshore songbird migration using #Motus tracking
His research theme:
From Patterns & Pathways to Protection: Understanding mechanisms of #birdmigration for #conservation
Heiko Schmaljohann out birding
Meet Heiko, our group leader! Since kindergarten, he has been fascinated by #birds and has developed a deep passion for their spectacular journeys across continents. This amazing phenomenon motivates him to study their #ecology. He believes such research is essential for protecting #MigratoryBirds
Stationary sites of a Bluethroat breeding Central Siberia and tracked with light-level geolocators in comparison with previously tracked Bluethroats from Europe and East Siberia.
New #ornithology paper ⏰
#birdmigration of a Bluethroat from Siberia along the Central Asian flyway to India/Pakistan
doi.org/10.1007/s103...
Based on BSc thesis of Sarah Strubbe & together with many collaborators 🇷🇺🇩🇪🇩🇰🇨🇭 incl. @ramonaheim.bsky.social
Great fieldwork in Siberia during pre-war times
@annikapeter.bsky.social with a Wheatear tagged and to be released for a scientifc study
We are happy to introduce our lab members - today: Annika @annikapeter.bsky.social!
She studies songbird navigation skills for her PhD & is fascinated by all kinds of birds & enjoys observing their behaviour, both at work & in her free time.
Wheatears have a special place in her heart ♥️
Great news! Last week, I arrived in Oldenburg to join @migecol.bsky.social as a PhD student and research assistant. I have been warmly welcomed, and I’m really excited for this new chapter!
