John F. McEvoy

I have recently started on another exciting collaboration with my good friends and colleagues Yaara Aaron-Rotman and Lei Cao at the Research Centre for Eco-Environmental Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Science in China. The Poyang Lake is one of the largest wetlands in Asia and a critical wintering area for migratory waterbirds along the East Asian Australasian Flyway. Its unique hydrological system allows the production of large biomass of plants and animal food. The main d

I recently published a paper with Paul McDonald and Graham Hall at University of New England in Australia where we evaluated the potential of UAVs (drones) for large scale waterfowl surveys. Most large scale waterfowl surveys are currently done using fixed wing aircraft with one or two trained observers looking out a window and counting/identifying birds as they go. We thought we could harness some of the power of UAVs to provide detailed photographic surveys of targeted wetl

A big part of my PhD work involved looking into potential cues for long distance movement in nomadic desert waterfowl. The arid landscapes of Australia are dominated by 'boom and bust' dynamics where long periods of drought are punctuated by periods of intense and continental-scale flooding. All life in the arid zone has to be able to respond to these rapid changes in resource distributions and many birds adopt nomadic movement behaviours. I used a combination of GPS tracking