Bye for now Yang!

From left to right, Nga Yee Lai, James Tweed, Xu Shi, Richard Fuller, Yang Wu, Kelsey Hannah, Tatsuya Amano, Samantha Wong-Topp, Violeta Berdejo-Espinola, Nicola Sockhill.

It’s been a great joy and privilege to host Wu Yang over the past couple of years at UQ, and the time came all too soon when we had to wave him goodbye at he set off back to China. Yang is doing his PhD on migratory species ecology and conservation, with a special focus on Pied Avocets. This species is really interesting because it’s population is increasing when many other shorebirds are in such terrible trouble. Trying to unlock those secrets could help achieve better conservation outcomes for the others!

Yang has submitted two of this PhD papers for publication while he has been here, and returns to China in a great position to finish things up. Yang is a very keen birder, and perhaps his most shining moment in Australian birding was finding an Australasian Bittern in Brisbane, the first record since the 1970s! The bird was successfully twitched by many people, who remain eternally grateful to Yang for his birding brilliance.

It was wonderful having you in the lab Yang. We wish you all the best with the rest of your PhD, and look forward to seeing you again many times in the future.