Congratulations to Kyu Min Huh!

Kyu Min successfully defended her thesis on 27th February 2026 with examiners Emily Shepard (Swansea University) and Adrian Thomas (University of Oxford). Her thesis entitled "Ontogeny and variability of take-off flight performance" was supervised by Graham Taylor (Oxford), Ben Sheldon (EGI, Oxford), and Steve Portugal (EGI, Oxford).

The thesis presents a unique set of methods and results from over 30,000 flights from around 100 individuals of small bird species ranging from 9 to 25 g, from controlled laboratory flights, spontaneous foraging flights, and escape flights triggered by a goshawk video in the field. Current bird flight literature leans towards large migratory or gliding birds for the interests of navigation and convenience of placing high-resolution loggers that would stay below 5 % of birds' body mass, but 45 % of global bird species are below 30 g. Kyu Min combined a radio-frequency identification (RFID) antenna with arrays of infrared sensors and a force-sensitive perch to automatically log take-off flights of great tits Parus major and blue tits Cyanistes caruleus visiting an open shed feeder at the field station. Understanding how small birds fly in the wild using high-resolution measurement system opens the doors into the wide scope of natural flight performance under selection, reflecting instantaneous decision-making processes and adaptive flight performance.

Kyu Min is currently a research assistant with Dr Lydia France looking at how birds of prey get better at flying from their first wing movements to aerial intercepts. Her second chapter, "Natural take-off flight performance is repeatable and scalable in mixed flock tit species." was accepted to the Journal of the Royal Society Interface this April, and she will be spending the next three months publishing the rest of her chapters.