The use of social information is widespread among animals and can influence critical individual processes such as selecting foraging and breeding locations. Individual differences in the utilisation of social information can therefore have significant fitness consequences that scale up to shape the social and spatial structure of animal populations and well as their dynamics. However, investigating these mechanisms in natural populations is challenging, as it requires long-term individual data collection over large sample sizes. In this talk, I will first share some findings from my PhD, where I investigated the drivers and consequences of sociality in a long-lived European raptor species, the red kite (Milvus milvus). By combining a feeding experiment during nestling development with multi-year GPS-tracking of over 200 juvenile red kites we could investigate how early-life effects and intrinsic characteristics influence the emergence of social phenotypes that ultimately affect survival. In the final part of my talk, I will discuss my current work here at ANU as a visiting Postdoc with Prof. Farine, where I aim to gain a deeper understanding of how the use of social information shapes the spatial distribution of red kites.