Big day yesterday, CleverCockie lab member Lisa Fontana @lisafontana.bsky.social finished the last day of data collection for her PhD, completing an experiment on social learning in cockatoos. Congratulations Lisa! 🎉

Our first Tham Lab photo with Megan Outram and Grace Jones @biologyanu.bsky.social

🐸 We want to understand how chytrid fungus infects frogs using structural biology, nanobodies & genetic engineering

Excited to be branching out to fungal diseases

#chytrid #nanobodies #fungus #effector

Another clever cockie: apnews.com/article/hong...

Caught mid fluff! Little corellas are a smaller species of cockatoo (Cacatua sanguinea) that often join sulphur-crested cockatoo flocks, especially in urban areas.

That's the spot...! A trio of allopreening cockies engaging in some social bonding at our field-site, captured by @elliearose.bsky.social.

If you'd like to learn more about when and why cockies allopreen, check out a recent paper by @julia-penndorf.bsky.social: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Saturday morning cockatoo

Hong Kong scientist puts hope in nest boxes to save endangered cockatoos phys.org/news/2025-08...

Lab member Lara Blumenstiel is currently wrapping up the last stage of training before moving on to cognitive testing. Sydney's clever cockies are playing her custom puzzle-box like pros!

#BiologyLetters in @theguardian.com | Prevalence and implications of sex reversal in free-living birds: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

📣 Interested in cultural evolution and artificial life? Call for abstracts for our upcoming workshop at @alife2025.bsky.social. Accepted abstracts will be presented as flash talks, and are not archival. Deadline is the September 12, w/ rolling acceptance. Details: sites.google.com/view/planetx... 🧪

It’s #NationalScienceWeek! 🐦

Our HANZAB encyclopaedia is now online & free – covering every bird ever recorded in Aus, NZ & Antarctica. Updated with the latest taxonomy & threat statuses, it’s a game-changer for bird lovers & researchers alike

🔗 hanzab.birdlife.org.au

#BirdLifeAustralia #Birds

Students of ASSAB! You can now apply for the 2025 student research grants here: www.assab.org/grants-2025

We have two grants available for up to AUD$2500, we will also select two highly commended applications.

Deadline: August 31st 2025

An extremely clever cockie, or one regretting their life choices?

Spotted at our Canberra field-site by @lisafontana.bsky.social, it's first time we've seen a sulphur-crested cockatoo successfully fledge 3 chicks! The usual is 2 eggs laid, resulting in 0-1 chicks.

An exciting & important new paper by @annamkearns.bsky.social & co-authors: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.....

Conservation genomics of the previously assumed to be extinct night parrot, showing recent connectivity between populations ~2000 km apart, but very low effective population sizes.

🐤 Like humans, animals can become stressed when trying to lead a group of peers in a particular direction, says @scienceanu.bsky.social

From bio-logging to conservation 🔽

New paper by an @animaltracking.bsky.social dream team

@diegoellissoto.bsky.social @anflack.bsky.social @arispeshkin.bsky.social Timm Wild, Hannah Williams, @teagueo.bsky.social

@cbehav.bsky.social @uni-konstanz.de

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Why hello there! Sunrise behind some early birds at one of our Sydney field-sites.

No, it's not a sulphur-crested cockatoo, but it is a clever cockie!

Masters student Miro van den Berg is using light-weight BLE-tags to study the urban lives of the gorgeous gang-gang cockatoo. You can read more here: sites.google.com/site/lucymap...

The crest tends to get all the attention, but cockies also have incredibly expressive chin feathers, aka the 'fluffenchops' - combined with the head tilt, this expression says "curious but relaxed and content".

You want us to do what now? The first steps of Lara training Sydney's wild cockatoos on how to play a touchscreen task...

We've found that it take about 2-3 weeks for cockies to go from these first steps to using the full apparatus, which we can then use to test individuals' cognitive abilities.

Two paper just out from the #clevercockieproject!

@julia-penndorf.bsky.social reveals how cockies play politics when deciding who to aggress: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....
&
@barbaraklump.bsky.social describes a new 'drinking innovation':
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Our central Sydney 2025 field-season has begun! Lee (undergrad intern) and Shefali (PhD student) are marking cockies with temporary paint dots as a first step to measure cognitive performance on standardised tests.

Hi Bluesky! 👋 We're the account for the Clever Cockie Project, researching culture and cognition in urban sulphur-crested cockatoos. We'll post updates from the field, along with our recent results and publications. You can find more, including our current team, here: www.clevercockies.com/the-team