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Time and energy are key currencies in animal ecology, and judicious management of these is a primary focus for natural selection. At present, however, there are only two main methods for estimation of rate of energy expenditure in the field, heart rate and doubly labelled water, both of which have been used with success; but both also have their limitations.

The deployment of data loggers that measure acceleration is emerging as a powerful tool for quantifying the behaviour of free‐living animals. Given that animal movement requires the use of energy, the accelerometry technique potentially has application in the quantification of rate of energy expenditure during activity.

In the present study, we test the hypothesis that acceleration can serve as a proxy for rate of energy expenditure in free‐living animals. We measured rate of energy expenditure as rates of O₂ consumption () and CO₂ production () in great …