ADU travels, expeditions and events

Photo L.G. Undehill		Professor Eberhard Gwinner, Head of the branch of the Max Planck Research Centre for Ornithology at Andechs, Germany, addresses the symposium. His talk was on The temporal control of bird migration. The symposium celebrated the 100th anniversary of continuous ornithological research at the Vogelwarte Radolfzell
Photo L.G. Undehill		The symposium was held at the University of Konstanz. The campus is on the top of a hill just outside the town of Konstaz, and has a magnificent view over the Bodensee, the second largest (after Lake Geneva) of the alpine lakes of central Europe.
Photo L.G. Undehill		With incredible efficiency, lunches emerged from the kitchen of the "mensa" at the University of Konstanz on a conveyor belt and ...
Photo L.G. Undehill		... were equally efficiently consumed. The people facing the camera are (from left) Dr Colin Bibby who presented a paper at the symposium on The conservation of migratory bird species, Dr Andreas Helbig Evolution of migration: a phylogenetic and biogeographic perspective and Professor Franz Bairlein Nutritional aspects of migratory birds
Photo L.G. Undehill		Along with Professor Gwinner, our host-in-chief was Professor Peter Berthold, who is Head of the branch of the Max Planck Research Centre for Ornithology at the Vogelwarte Radolfzell, Germany. At the symposium, his talk was titled Doing the impossible: making nonmigrants from migrants and vice versa. Seated on the left is Dr Ian Newton Geographical patterns in bird migration. The 40 papers presented at the meeting are to be published as a book by Springer-Verlag
Photo L.G. Undehill		The headquarters of the Max Planck Research Centre for Ornithology at the Vogelwarte Radolfzell has been housed in this castle, Schloss Moggingen, for most of its 100 years. Under the leadership of Professor Berthold, the Vogelwarte Radolfzell has been a world leader in migration research, both experimental and observational, for several decades
Photo L.G. Undehill		Professor Peter Berthold, at apartment 68 of "Blackcap City", explains the painstakingly careful experimental research undertaken on a large scale with Blackcaps, a species of warbler that performs exceptionally well in captivity. Some populations of this species are migrants, and others are sedentary. Through selective breeding, this is where they "do the impossible". By repeatedly pairing the offspring of migrants that show the least migratory restlessness, they are able to produce nonmigrant sedentary individuals in about four to five generations!
Photo L.G. Undehill		The excellent symposium dinner was held in the Restaurant "Adler" in Guttingen. A feature of the meeting was the inclusion of many students studying migration in all the activities. Here are two PhD students, both based at the Max Planck Research Centre for Ornithology at Andechs, Elizabeth Yohannes, from Ethiopia, and Sophia Engel, who presented a poster about her research titled Water balance during long distance flight in migratory birds

I am extremely grateful to Professor Peter Berthold and Professor Eberhard Gwinner for the invitation to attend this meeting, at which my paper was titled Within ten feathers: primary moult strategies of migratory waders (Charadrii). It was a great meeting, and a real privilege to be present and meet with most of the world leaders in the field of avian migration. An especial word of thanks to all the support staff and students at the Max Planck Research Centre for Ornithology at both the Vogelwarte Radolfzell and at Andechs for the roles they played in helping to ensure that every aspect of the symposium ran smoothly.

Les Underhill
11 September 2001