New Zealand / Covid 19

Capping off 11 years of university study locked down

20:12 pm on 1 May 2020
Amy Williams, Journalist

After studying for over a third of his life, Wesley Webb didn't feel like mooching around home on what would have been his graduation day.

Photo: Supplied

Last Friday, 22 April, the 29 year-old would have donned regalia, given a rousing valedictorian speech to a crowd of 600, and collected his doctorate and the title Dr Webb from Massey University.

"Not being able to have that moment was a bit hard," he said.

"When you get a few years into a PhD you want to finish at all costs. I looked forward to graduation and celebrating all the hard work."

Many people have found creative ways to celebrate milestones in lockdown, but spare a thought for those who've dedicated years of study to complete doctoral degrees.

As Covid-19 spread in New Zealand, graduation ceremonies around the country were cancelled.

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Webb works as a junior research assistant for the university, and said he felt privileged to be able to continue working from home.

"The threat of a pandemic was eclipsing everything else."

Still, when graduation day arrived he felt like being stuck at home was a let-down after years of hard work - 11 years tertiary study in total including five and-a-half on his PhD. But his family bubble had a surprise in store.

"I was busy with work and wasn't paying much attention to what they were doing, in retrospect they were spending a lot of time in the kitchen," said Webb, who was asked to wear a shirt and tie to dinner.

After a celebratory meal, they revealed a full set of regalia, contactlessly borrowed from Webb's supervisor, and asked him to read his valedictorian speech.

"It felt really special to be wearing the same regalia as my supervisor graduated in. It was a nice way to commemorate."

Webb first studied music composition and biology at Auckland University in 2009, and graduated with a conjoint degree in specialties that felt worlds apart.

Photo: Supplied

But a chance encounter led him to a doctoral degree in behavioural ecology at Massey University - specifically, the varied dialects of songbirds.

"It was really cool to find a PhD that merged those two interests, it felt very providential," he said.

He recorded male and female bellbirds across the Hauraki Gulf on six different islands, analysing the syllable types of their calls at different locations to look for similarities and differences.

"Much like how Aussies sound different to Kiwis in their accents, within a species of bird you can get this phenomenon at different locations they can have very different song cultures."

Among Webb's findings were that males and female bellbirds shared little in terms of their song repertoire.

"It was surprisingly small. Males and females had separate song cultures, it's almost like the males and females speak two different languages."

He found bellbirds also have strikingly different calls depending on their location, with only their bell-like call in common.

"They are losing their old song and learning the new song of the new area when they move," said Webb.

As for the country's city streets during lockdown, there has been anecdotal evidence of rare birds returning to backyards but Webb said it was too early to draw conclusions.

"I haven't got any goss on that, but it's something we're all interested in as biologists, it's just we don't have any good data on it yet."

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