Ondrej Fiser

Common Ringed Plover (Charadrius hiaticula) is able to adjust the nest defense to perceived risk - Journal of Ornithology Shorebirds experience high rates of nest predation due to their ground-nesting, leading to diverse antipredator behaviors to mitigate this risk. Accurate predator recognition enables birds to adjust t...

Now online in Journal of #Ornithology

Common Ringed Plover (Charadrius hiaticula) is able to adjust the nest defense to perceived risk

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

1/6 Emotional/affective contagion in bumblebees

First evidence that emotions are contagious in insects too.
Bumblebees that observed an optimistic bumblebee became optimistic themselves.
This is the most basic form of empathy.

(paper) www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Natalie and I have resubmitted a revised manuscript about the behavioural responses of tropical wrens to simulated predators. Great revising @natingui.bsky.social! Fingers crossed for a positive outcome. Our 3D-printed Ferruginous Pygmy-Owls were made by @lincolnsavi.bsky.social.

1/5 Birds around the world use the same alarm call to warn of the presence of brood parasites.

They studied 21 species from nine families that were separated by 50 million years of evolution. Perhaps the most interesting finding: the alarm call is learned.

(paper) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Neophobia compared in 1,439 birds of 136 species

Specialised diets and migration are associated with greater fear of new objects. Surprisingly, witnessing such objects in groups is also associated with greater fear.

(paper) journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
(blog) phys.org/news/2025-10...

So excited that our first major empirical @themanybirds.bsky.social paper is now out in @plosbiology.org!
Leading this big team science project, with our excellent core leadership team, is a labour of love for me, delighted to see our hard work over the past 4 years has reached this milestone!

😍🦅 An absolutely fantastic project and the best collaboration. I am very happy that it was successful on such a scale. We are glad that we could contribute on behalf of our Czech team from @prfju.bsky.social 🪶 🙏 #BirdCognition @ckecz.bsky.social

🌙 Noc vědců se Zeptej se vědce bude i v Praze!

👉 Tak si uložte 26. 9. v 19:15 na Přírodovědecké fakultě UK. 👈

👀 A s kým se uvidíte? ⬇️

1/3 Rooks that understand us when we speak!

Leo, a 21-year-old rook, began following verbal instructions spontaneously during comparative cognition experiments. He has been tested for this ability, and did great.

(paper) link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Goffins being social in Singapur - enjoying fieldwork with @theroesa.bsky.social

Stay tuned for a very exciting update coming shortly from the ManyBirds Project! Eeek!

Thanks! 🙏

Thank you and take care 🙏🦅

Thank you 🦅🙏

🎓✨ It’s official – I am now a Ph.D. 🎓✨
After years of research, fieldwork, writing, and countless discussions, I successfully defended my dissertation on predator recognition in birds.

I couldn’t have done this without the support of my colleagues, mentors, friends, family and birds. Thank you! 🦅🙏

In robins, males and females sing to defend a territory. A new paper in @royalsocietypublishing.org shows that both increase vocal effort when hearing the song of an intruder, regardless of its sex. This highlights the role of female birdsong in displaying aggression: doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

A figure showing that light pollution prolongs avian vocal activity by nearly an hour. (A) Most diurnal bird species show bimodal vocalization patterns with peaks in the morning and evening; in light-polluted landscapes (yellow shading), the first vocalizations occur earlier in the morning and the last vocalizations occur later in the evening. (B) Globally—averaged across species, space, and season—onset of morning vocalization shifted 18 min earlier in the brightest landscapes versus the darkest landscapes. (C) Similarly, evening cessation was delayed by an average of 32 min. In (B) and (C), lines are means and shaded regions are 95% confidence intervals (CI) of model predictions.

Light pollution is causing birds around the world to sing for longer each day, prolonging their vocalizations on average by 50 minutes, according to a new study in Science.

Learn more: https://scim.ag/3Uz7vzP

🤩 Both amusing and informative! #BirdCognition #Ornithology 🪶

Picture of a copy of "Bird Brains and Behavior" by Striedter & Iwaniuk: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262552738/bird-brains-and-behavior/

Broad in scope but strikingly concise, highly accessible, and nuanced - go get this book if you have even the slightest interest in birds and/or vertebrate brain evolution. I will use it a lot. Congrats @evoneuro.bsky.social!
#neuroskyence 🧪

Wild jackdaws learn to tolerate juveniles to exploit new foraging opportunities | Biology Letters Social tolerance can enhance access to resources and is thought to be crucial in facilitating the evolution of cooperation, social cognition and culture, but it is unknown whether animals can optimize...

New @cornishjackdaws.bsky.social paper out today in @royalsociety.org Biology Letters. We found adult jackdaws can learn to tolerate usually bullied or ignored juveniles when they provided information about a new foraging resource.

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Response to intruder number is related to spontaneous quantity discrimination performance in a wild bird The ability to discriminate between quantities is important for animal species. We show that wild magpies can discriminate both between different quantitie

New paper alert 🚨 We test quantity discrimination in #magpies using both a cognitive task and playback experiment and find that birds can discriminate between quantities in both! Interestingly, performance in the two task was negatively correlated! 🐦
@mandyridley.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1093/behe...

YouTube video by Frankfurter Kunstverein Born Knowing: The Innate Knowlegde in Our Heads – Lecture by Prof. Dr. Giorgio Vallortigara

The video of the talk in Frankfurt on "Born Knowing" by MITPress (in English) and by Adelphi (translated in Italian)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfEp...

Numerical cognition in birds Nature Reviews Psychology - Birds demonstrate complex numerical abilities at levels similar to primates. In this Review, Regolin and colleagues describe the contribution of laboratory, field and...

Our new review on numerical cognition in birds, just out in Nature Reviews Psychology! 🐦🧠

Behavior, neurobiology & field studies across avian species

Very fond of the neurobiology part :)

📖 Read it here: rdcu.be/eyErI

The physiological cost of leadership in collective movements Individuals can gain substantial benefits from collective actions.1,2,3,4,5,6,7 However, collective behaviors introduce new challenges, like coordinat…

Out now: The physiological costs of leadership

We reveal that initiating movements—especially when attempting to initiate against a majority and when there is directional conflict—drives elevated heart rates in vulturine guineafowl

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

@currentbiology.bsky.social

1/4 Use of tools (for allogrooming) in orcas

They have been recorded (Salish Sea) using kelp, cutting it (technically the first documentation of toolmaking in cetaceans) and using it to groom others.

(paper) www.cell.com/current-biol...

Pinyon Jays (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus) and Clark’s nutcrackers (Nucifraga columbiana) can discriminate between pilfering and non-pilfering conspecifics, but not between heterospecifics - Animal Cogni... When foraging, individuals often need to assess potential risk from competitors. Within many food-caching (food-storing) species, individuals can modify their caching behavior depending on whether oth...

Late to the party but the last paper of my PhD was published earlier this year!
Pinyon jays (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus) and Clark’s nutcrackers (Nucifraga columbiana) can discriminate between pilfering and non-pilfering conspecifics, but not between heterospecifics link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Fig. 1 from the article. Overview of the selective and non-selective forces influencing the expression of same-sex partnerships in birds, adapted from the framework for understanding same-sex sexual behaviour in Clive et al. (2020). Illustration: Bertille Mohring

NEW PAPER: Same-sex partnerships in birds: a review of the current literature and a call for more data.

➡️ vist.ly/3n99bk6

#ornithology #birds #same-sexbehaviour #review #partnerships @tashgillies.bsky.social @katrina-siddiqi.bsky.social

Illustration: @bertillemohring.bsky.social

https://www.livescience.com/63923-why-cities-have-so-many-pigeons.html

1/2 Pigeons pay attention to where other pigeons are looking

They used a motion capture system to study this. The probability of them paying attention to an object increases with the number of pigeons already looking at it. It is linear, with no quorum or limit

(paper) www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

Sure :)

Od špačků k hashtagům: Hejna na nebi a v online světě lidí

👨‍🔬 Etolog Ondřej Fišer a filozof jazyka Tomáš Koblížek na této dvojpřednášce objasní, jak výzkum ptačích hejn inspiruje studium internetových komunit.
@laniusondrej.bsky.social
@tomaskoblizek.bsky.social