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Magda obtained her MSc degree in ornithology at the University of Gdansk in Poland in 1994, and her PhD in 2003, also at the University of Gdansk, with a thesis on "The spatio-temporal pattern to autumn migration of the European Robin (Erithacus rubecula) between the Baltic region and its winter quarters" (supervisor: Prof. P. Busse; Ardea 90 (3): 489-502).
While doing her MSc degree Magda spent two years working as the Important Bird Areas Programme Officer for the Polish partner of BirdLife International before returning to academia. She has been a permanent researcher and a lecturer in the Department of Ecology and Zoology at the University of Gdansk since 1995.
Magda's main research interests are the patterns and strategies of large-scale migrations of birds in her two favourite groups - waders and passerines. She has experience in the molecular techniques of DNA analyses for sexing birds, gained in her studies of waders and other waterbirds (Ornis Fennica 83: 1–10). Magda has taken part in many research expeditions, such as to the Faeroe Islands to help in studies of the development of puffin chicks, to Bolivia for an assessment of wildlife in an Amazon rainforest nature reserve, and trips to Turkey to help set up ringing and waterbird studies.
She has been a keen bird ringer since 1995 and has divided her fieldwork and research since then between the ringing stations of the SE European Bird Migration Network (SEEN) and the Waterbird Research Group KULING, her 'parent' group. In 1997 she launched an international research project on the migration patterns of the Wood Sandpiper 'Tringa glareola 2000', under the auspices of the International Wader Study Group. As a part of this project she ran a three-year research project on the different strategies adopted by male and female Wood Sandpipers during the autumn and spring migrations (Ornis Svecica 17: 3–14). She is working on a monograph examining the movements of the Wood Sandpiper, which sums up this research. Magda is a member of the International Wader Study Groupâ??s executive committee and is on the editorial board of the IWSG Bulletin. She is also the representative of the company Ecotone (providing ringing equipment) for South Africa, cooperating with SAFRING (contact: southafrica@ecotone.pl). Apart from ringing and birding, Magdaâ??s passions are travelling and folk music.
In 2007 Magda visited the ADU for three months to study the moult of Wood Sandpipers in South Africa. She followed this up in 2008 by taking a two-year post-doctoral fellowship at the ADU, with Prof. Les Underhill as her mentor, in which she is focusing on comparing the moult strategies of waders using inland and coastal wetland habitats. Her post-doc was supported by the Claude Leon Foundation, which generously extended the fellowship for a third year, until the end of 2010. As a part of her wader research in South Africa she has conducted wader ringing, combined with collecting moult and biometric data, near Pietermaritzburg (KwaZulu-Natal) and particularly at Barberspan Bird Sanctuary (NW Province), where she undertook extensive fieldwork, especially on Kittlitz's Plover. She invested a great deal of effort in training the fieldrangers there in bird ringing and atlasing techniques, and some of them qualified as ringers during her three years as a post-doc.
Near the start of 2011, she returned to a teaching post at the University of Gdansk, but visits South Africa and the ADU once or twice a year, to maintain the contacts and the continue her research.
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