In this new section, one of the journal’s co-Editors-in-Chiefs highlight their favorite paper from the latest JFO issue.
This edition is courtesy of Dr. Mark E. Hauber, outgoing co-EIC.
The selected paper was:
“What they do in the shadows: partial nocturnality in a large forest parrot” by Tirth Vaishnav; Rachel C. Shaw, and Kevin. C. Burns (2026, Issue 2, JFO):.
Mark says:
“As an outgoing co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Field Ornithology, it is my honor to pick one final paper, this one on a New Zealand parrot species co-authored by one of my former students, Dr. Rachael Shaw and her team at Victoria University of Wellington. For an academic, the extended chosen family includes lab members, mentees, coauthors, and other collaborators, and Rachael has served in each one of those roles along her and my career.
In turn, ths new study from the Victoria researchers reveals that nearly 20% of the encounters that this team has recorded with Kaka (Nestor meridionalis) in Wellington, New Zealand occured at night. This is surprising, because many of the behaviors recorded at night (long-distance flight, preening, walking, and feeding) are the same as those seen in abundance during daytime.
Fig. 1. Map of the observation trail within Zealandia Te Māra a Tāne, a predator-free wildlife sanctuary in Wellington city. Insets on the left indicate Zealandia’s location in New Zealand’s North Island.
Fig. 2. Examples of behaviors undertaken by Kākā (Nestor meridionalis) in Zealandia. Kākā foraging during day (A) and at night (B), grooming during the day (C) and at night (D), moving through the canopy during the day (E) and at night (F), and sleeping during the day (G) and at night (H).
The authors conclude that the implications of parrot nocturnality have important implications for the life history and the social behavior of this rare parrot, whose numbers, however, have been increasing on predator-free offshore islands and fenced-in mainland islands in New Zealand.”
The results of this study were recently published in the Journal of Field Ornithology:
Vaishnav, T., R. C. Shaw, and K. C. Burns. 2026. What they do in the shadows: partial nocturnality in a large forest parrot. Journal of Field Ornithology 97(2):8. https://doi.org/10.5751/JFO-00813-970208.