Dr Jesse Conklin
Position: Post-doctoral researcher, Conservation Ecology Group, The University of Groningen (formerly a PhD student at Massey University). Field: Ornithology
Jesse Conklin spends his time researching things about birds that interest him.
The main parts to his work are:
brainstorming – figuring out which research questions are interesting and can be answered
birdwatching – doing fieldwork to collect data that will answer the questions
writing – analysing the data to find out what the answers are and how they can be communicated to people around the world who are interested in the same questions.
Jesse Conklin with a godwit
Ornithologist Jesse Conklin working in the field. He holds a godwit.
He finds all of these jobs challenging, fascinating and gratifying. His particular interest is long-distance migration, particularly the factors leading to differences in behaviour and appearance of individual birds.
While growing up in California, Jesse was always drawing and originally went to university to study commercial art and illustration. After graduating, he worked as a graphic designer and toy designer near San Francisco for 10 years, including running his own small graphic design company with a friend from university.
Jesse had always been interested in animals but never seriously considered being a scientist until he started birdwatching and became fascinated by the many types of birds around him and their interesting behaviours. He began travelling all over the United States to see different birds and soon realised that this part of his life was a much greater passion than his career as a designer. So he saved up some money, quit his job and went back to university in 2001 to become a wildlife biologist.
The best thing about being a biologist is constantly learning about the world and how it really works.
Jesse Conklin at work
Scientific investigations do not just take place in laboratories. Scientists carry out their research in many places. Here, Dr Jesse Conklin is carrying out field work as part of his research into migratory birds. Jesse hoped the inflatable crane decoys would attract godwits but the godwits had other ideas!
For his master’s degree, Jesse studied a small migratory shorebird called the dunlin, which travels between California and Alaska every year. This connected him with biologists working in Alaska, and soon he was spending every summer out on the Arctic tundra in Alaska, studying birds that came there from all over the world to nest. In 2005, he met several people who had come to Alaska from New Zealand to see bar-tailed godwits on their breeding grounds. After talking with them about godwits and New Zealand, Jesse decided that he wanted to study godwits at both ends of their incredible migration, so he came to New Zealand in 2007 to study at Massey University and has been studying godwits ever since, including short trips to see them in China and Korea as well. In 2012 he finished his PhD that looked at the godwits migration and moved to the Netherlands. As of 2018, he is a post-doctoral researcher in the Conservation Ecology Group at the University of Groningen.
Jessie is also co-Editor-in-Chief and graphic designer for Wader Study, the scientific journal of the International Wader Study Group.
Things that are all around us – birds, bugs, trees, water and even rocks – are doing astounding and beautiful things every day, if we just stop and look at them.
He also enjoys camping, hiking, cooking, photography, art, music, language and particularly fiction in its many forms (literature, movies and live theatre).
Related content
Research has revealed that godwits make the longest non-stop flight of any known bird. Dr Phil Battley and Jesse Conklin are two scientists who study and track these birds.
Activity idea
In the activity Tracking E7, students explore the incredible flight of a special bird known as E7 to learn about the migratory flight of bar-tailed godwits from New Zealand.
Useful links
See Jessie's profile here for further information.
In Your flight itinerary has changed Dr Jesse Conklin shares his 14-year journey studying Bar-tailed Godwits.
Alison Ballance joins a team, including Jesse, catching and tagging 45 godwits to find out the sleep secrets of the kuaka, find out more in this RadioNZ Our Changing World programme from March 2024.
This article is based on information current in 2011 and updated in 2021.
