We offer resources in which students apply the precision of laboratory science to new behaviors and new contexts that are more like field settings. A special interest is in the development of avian vocal communication and social competence. We and our students have taken many approaches to looking at social experience work with birds in how social affiliations among younger and older generations of birds lead to social and evolutionary change. As cultivators of behavior, we recognize that attention to an animal's social needs is as essential as a farmer's attention to good soil. Farmers begin to see the effects of poor soil quite quickly as yields decline.
Social malnourishment is harder to recognize and easier to ignore.
To achieve this goal, we leave the typical laboratory cage behind and fashion semi-naturalistic environments, environments balancing our need to see an animal with the animal's need to space and security. Such settings reveal behaviors even hard to see in the wild. Social experience affects the process and outcome of vocal ontogeny in two populations of cowbirds. Female visual displays affect the development of male song in the cowbird.