My Work with Birds
My experience in ornithology spans more than a decade. This has involved research at the Natural History Museum, London, into plumage colouration and bill evolution, and bird flight and flocking behaviour at Royal Holloway, University of London.
In my ornithological consultancy work, I regularly deliver Environmental Statement (ES) chapters, Ecological Impact Assessments (EcIA), and Shadow Habitats Regulations Assessments (sHRA). I also lead the design and delivery of a range of ornithological surveys across the South West and Wales, including Breeding Bird Surveys, Winter Bird Surveys, SPA surveys, Nocturnal Surveys, and nesting checks.
I've been a licensed bird ringer since 2016 (now an S-permit trainer), conducting ringing on behalf of the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO). This involves placing small metal (and sometimes plastic) rings to birds' legs to help track their movements, monitor their survival, and study their behaviour. I've experience in general and targeted bird ringing projects across the UK, working with passerines, seabirds, waterfowl, and near-passerines in a variety of research and conservation settings. Projects have included seabird colour-ringing and noosing on offshore cliffs in Aberdeenshire, Puffin and Manx Shearwater studies at Skokholm Island Bird Observatory, cannon-netting and colour-ringing of gulls and waterfowl in Essex and Devon, and ringing priority heathland and woodland species in Wales and Somerset. I've also contributed to Nightingale monitoring at Knepp Estate — featured in David Attenborough's Wonder of Song.
Features
We were featured on "Attenborough's Wonder of Song" on BBC One while supporting Nightingale nest monitoring at Knepp Rewilding Project, West Sussex.
A short piece on the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and our demonstrating at the Global Bird Fair.
All footage copyright Simon McCabe.
I was involved with LEGO’s Build the Change: Build for Birds initiative, aiming to inspire your 7-14-year-old students to engage in bird conservation. The live lesson went out to up to 19,000 school children across the UK!
I delivered a webinar for farmers in the South West under Lidl’s Sustainable Beef Programme, exploring why farmland birds matter and the practical actions that can help them thrive within sustainable beef systems.
Sometimes I record birds...
Publications
The effects of ecology and behavior on the evolution of coloration in Coraciiformes
Babarovic F, Cooney CR, Varley ZK, Nouri LO, Nadeau NJ & Thomas GH
Behavioral Ecology, 34(3), 387–398 (2023)
https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/arad008
Latitudinal gradients in avian colourfulness
Cooney CR, He Y, Varley ZK, Nouri LO, Moody CJA, Jardine MD, Liker A, Székely T & Thomas GH
Nature Ecology & Evolution, 6(5), 622–629 (2022)
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01714-1
Deep learning image segmentation reveals patterns of UV reflectance evolution in passerine birds
He Y, Varley ZK, Nouri LO, Moody CJA, Jardine MD, Maddock S, Thomas GH & Cooney CR
Nature Communications, 13, 5068 (2022)
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-32586-5
Segmenting biological specimens from photos to understand the evolution of UV plumage in passerine birds
He Y, Cooney CR, Varley ZK, Nouri LO, Moody CJA, Jardine MD, Maddock S & Thomas GH
bioRxiv (2021)
https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.07.22.453339
The signature of competition in ecomorphological traits across the avian radiation
Chira AM, Cooney CR, Bright JA, Capp EJR, Hughes EC, Moody CJA, Nouri LO, Varley ZK & Thomas GH
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 287, 20201585 (2020)
https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.1585
Sexual selection predicts the rate and direction of colour divergence in a large avian radiation
Cooney CR, Varley ZK, Nouri LO, Moody CJA, Jardine MD & Thomas GH
Nature Communications, 10, 1773 (2019)
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-09859-7
Correlates of rate heterogeneity in avian ecomorphological traits
Chira AM, Cooney CR, Bright JA, Capp EJR, Hughes EC, Moody CJA, Nouri LO, Varley ZK & Thomas GH
Ecology Letters, 21(10), 1505–1514 (2018)
https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13131
Mega-evolutionary dynamics of the adaptive radiation of birds
Cooney CR, Bright JA, Capp EJR, Chira AM, Hughes EC, Moody CJA, Nouri LO, Varley ZK & Thomas GH
Nature, 542(7641), 344–347 (2017)
https://doi.org/10.1038/nature21074