Profile
Elspeth Sage
My CV
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Education:
I went to school at Macclefield High School, then I did a degree in Physics at the University of Nottingham. Now I’m doing my PhD at the university of Amsterdam
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About Me:
I’m Elspeth, an animal ecologist in Amsterdam! I study how gulls behave: where they go, and why they go there, and how the environment impacts them.
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I’m originally from North West England, but now I live and work in Amsterdam. I love to cook and be outside, and my dream is too own a big flock of chickens, but right now my apartment is just too small. Recently I started learning how to play the spoons, (go google it, it’s very cool). I also love telling people how wonderful gulls are, because I think they have an unfairly bad reputation. My pronouns are she/her.
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Gulls are really interesting birds: they’re intelligent, they live a long time, and they often aren’t very afraid of humans! They’re also pretty good at adapting to the environment around them: they can eat a lot of different things, from fish to worms, to rubbish and even your own lunch. They can fly out to sea but also hang around in the city.
I’m interested in how they manage to do all of this! So we use tiny GPS trackers, similar to the kind you might get in a mobile phone, which tracks your position using satellite technology. This technology can track where the gulls go all year!
Then we can look at how the environment affects them. Do gulls fly further when the weather is nicer? How much energy does it even cost to fly? How do gulls decide where to go to find food? -
My Typical Day:
I get up and go straight for the kettle! My day doesn’t start until I’ve had a cup of tea (and some toast). Then I like to check where the gulls have been recently, so I look at some GPS data! During the summer I live on a little island where the gulls breed, and I go for a long cycle on my bike to monitor them: how many eggs do gulls lay and how many chicks do they hatch. Otherwise some days I spend all my time at my computer, analysing information, writing scientific papers (and answering emails!)
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My work can vary so much! Sometimes it’s just me and my computer, doing computer programming work. We get lots and lots of data from our gulls so I have to use computer programming techniques to carry out our experiments and look at the data. I also get to talk to a lot of people and share our ideas!
During the summer our gulls come to a little island to breed, and we want to know how well they’re able to produce chicks. This helps us monitor the size of the population, but also understand a little more about how gulls raise their chicks. Then I live in a small lab out in the country, and cycle across a big bog to our colony. We have to count every egg we find, and monitor it until it hatches. We usually find more than 100 nests with 2 or 3 eggs, so it’s a lot to count! The best is when the chicks hatch because they’re small and fluffy and very funny.
Back in the office I can look at all the data about the chicks and the eggs and also our GPS data!
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Curious, noisy, energetic
What did you want to be after you left school?
I had absoloutely no idea
Were you ever in trouble at school?
No, I'm always scared of making people angry!
Who is your favourite singer or band?
It changes every day, but today it's Radiohead
What's your favourite food?
Cake. Or curry. But not at the same time
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
I wish to always have a job I'm never bored of, friends that always uspport me, and a large flock of chickens
Tell us a joke.
Why are seagulls called seagulls? Cause if they flew over the bay, they'd be bagels...
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