Tim Birkhead

Timothy Robert Birkhead FRS (born 28 February 1950) is a British zoologist, and professor of behavior and evolution at the University of Sheffield.

Birkhead was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree from Newcastle University in 1972, followed by a Doctor of Philosophy from University of Oxford in 1976 on the Breeding biology and survival of guillemots Uria aalge and a Doctor of Science from Newcastle in 1989 with thesis titled Sperm competition and the behavioural ecology of birds.

Birkhead's research falls into three main areas:

• Post-copulatory sexual selection, mainly in birds
• Population biology of birds.
• The history of science, and of reproduction and ornithology in particular.

Birkhead has made important contributions to the field of behavioural ecology — the study of how animal behaviour evolves under the influence of environmental pressures. He also studies the competitive actions of male birds’ sperm. He showed that extra-pair copulation — where the offspring raised by a pair are the result of the female mating with an outsider male — is common amongst birds. Tim also demonstrated the existence of ‘guarding techniques’, which are carried out by the male bird in a pair. In studies of the zebra finch, he revealed that the sperm of the last male to mate with a female took precedence for fertilising her eggs.

His 2016 book on birds' eggs, The Most Perfect Thing, was shortlisted for the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize.

Publications

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• The red canary: the story of the first genetically engineered animal, Phoenix, 2004, ISBN 978-0-7538-1772-8
•  ; Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011, ISBN 978-0-7475-9822-0
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• Ten Thousand Birds: Ornithology since Darwin, Princeton University Press, 2011, ISBN 978-0-691-15197-7
• Bird Sense: What it Is Like to Be a Bird, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2012, ISBN 978-1-4088-2013-1
• The Most Perfect Thing: the Inside (and Outside) of a Bird's Egg, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2016, ISBN 978-1-4088-5126-5