The temptation to do field research on unstudied birds - without needing a raincoat - finally brought me to The Australian National University, where I have been working on avian social behaviour, breeding biology and acoustic communication. I was an Editor for the Journal of Avian Biology from 2000-2013, Secretary of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology from to 2006 to 2014, and am currently on the Editorial Boards of Bioacoustics, Biology Letters and the Australian Journal of Zoology.