Charlotte Christensen  - Field Assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology

Recently contributed posts:

• Don't ask me what I'm doing (between my MSc and PhD)
• Ready? Set. Fieldwork.

​The assignment was to draw your “grown-up self” - so 6-year old Charlotte drew herself swinging from a tree (Tarzan-style) in a thick jungle with colourful flowers and feline eyes peering through the leaves. I wanted to be an explorer. Although health and safety regulations have precluded some aspects of this vision becoming a reality, I feel I have stayed true to my initial aspirations. To discover, to venture on new terrain and to satisfy an endless list of questions is surely what drives children to be a handful and, eventually, grown-ups like ourselves, to continue down the research path.
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My academic journey started at the University of Bristol, where I completed a Psychology-Zoology bachelor. A field course on Lundy Island gave me a first impression of what collecting and analysing my own data would be like, and I loved it! After graduating, I went to South Africa as a research assistant for the Dwarf Mongoose Research Project. I gained an insight and appreciation for the field of behavioural ecology. Spending full days with this little cooperatively breeding carnivore, meant there was plenty of time to wonder about the ways in which the group members communicated, coordinated their actions and contributed to collaborative tasks. I decided to pursue a research masters on the territorial scent-marking and movement behaviour of the dwarf mongoose. After handing in my thesis, I was keen to run follow-up experiments and went back out as project manager. It was around this time I came across an advertisement for a new project at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in the Collective Behaviour department on vulturine guineafowl. It ticked all the boxes: collective behaviour, nifty technology, amazing lab group and field work in Kenya. I received an initial 4-month position as a field technician on the project. It being a new project and a study species which hitherto has received little literary (bar culinary) attention, meant there was work to be done! From testing the GPS-tags, recording behaviours and vocalisations, writing up protocols to finding the best way of trapping these not-easily-fooled birds. I’m now gearing up for another 4 months with the vulturine guineafowl, already excited at the prospect of starting the day with their piercing recruitment calls.