Exploring the Colorful Lives of Australian Fairywrens

October 8, 2025

Ithaca, NY—Birds dazzle us with an extraordinary variety of colors and songs, signals that play a major role in how they communicate, attract mates, and evolve. Yet even after decades of research, many mysteries remain. Why do some males adopt drab plumage that makes them look more like females, despite the advantage of brighter colors in courtship? How do songs and plumage patterns influence not only the formation of new species, but also unexpected connections between them? These are some of the questions Dr. Mike Webster— Robert G. Engle Professor of Ornithology and director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library—will explore at the upcoming 2025 Paul C. Mundinger Distinguished Lectureship.  

Date and Time: October 16, 2025, at 5:30 PM 
Location: Room B25, Warren Hall, on the Cornell University campus and streamed live.  
Title: Feathers Down Under: Exploring the evolution of sexual signals in Australian fairywrens 
This lecture is free and open to the public.  

Dr. Webster will present a broad overview of his long-term research aimed at understanding the evolution and function of the striking plumage and songs of Australian fairywrens. 

Australian Fairywrens are small wrenlike birds with splashy plumage and behaviors that match. It took just one day for Webster to get hooked on Australian fairywrens while visiting Australia. “They’re fun,” he says, “they’re interesting and they have a lot of interesting behavior.” Those features fueled decades long research by Webster and his students.

“Birds use their coloration, their visual signals, their voice, their songs, to talk to each other, to communicate,” says Webster, “and we barely know anything about why they do that, how they do that, what shapes the diversity.”  

His work shows that in some populations, while females tend to prefer brightly colored males, there are breeding males who don’t look like other males. 

“It comes down to costs and constraints,” he says, “and that’s what we’ll be talking about in the lecture.” 

Dr. Webster says he will share his ground-breaking work and his passion for his research during the talk: “There’s so much that’s fascinating about bird coloration and song.” 

About Dr. Webster: Dr. Webster is the Faculty Director of the Macaulay Library, a media collection dedicated to capturing and preserving photos, sound, and video recordings of the behaviors of wild birds and other animals. He is also the Robert G. Engle Professor of Ornithology in Cornell University’s Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, where he teaches courses on animal communication and behavior. His fascination with animal behavior began in childhood, spending time outdoors and exploring wild places. Dr. Webster earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, San Diego, and a PhD from Cornell University, where his dissertation focused on the behavior of a Neotropical bird, the Montezuma Oropendola.  

This lectureship was established in honor of the late Paul Mundinger who received his PhD in Evolutionary Biology from Cornell University.  

Virtual Attendance: The Mundinger lecture will also be streamed live via Zoom. Click to join.

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U.S. Media Contact: 
Kathi Borgmann, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, (607) 254-2137, klb274@cornell.edu