You can learn more about my upcoming Nature's Rights Bill, and sign up to endorse it as an individual or organisation, by visiting Nature's Rights website: www.natures-rights.org/uk-bill Thank you for your support 🌎

CT technician position available at the U-M Museum of Zoology/Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology: careers.umich.edu/job_detail/2...

Hundreds of #swifts over Brent Reservoir/Welsh Harp this evening!

Hey look: A job! @echinerd.bsky.social and I are looking for a research technician to work on sea urchin development. If you are good at segmenting CT scans and want a chance to work on some super cool organisms, this job here at UCL is for you! apply now: bit.ly/4o2qccY

There's a persistent fantasy that maybe some other nice countries will start mass-hiring US scientists. That's not going to happen. A few high-profile, big name researchers will get poached, sure. But most countries, including some very nice ones, are underemploying their own scientists already.

Seeing a single magpie is a joy. Seeing any number of magpies is a joy. All corvids are wonderful and that's the end of it.

So, @edzitron.com ate his Wheatties this morning

Titanic completes mostly successful maiden voyage

1. London Underground station flooding has reportedly been reduced by around 90% thanks to a group of engineers: beavers. After conservationists reintroduced a family of beavers into a nearby city park, the animals built dams and restored wetlands that now absorb and slow floodwater naturally.

...In practise, it is not possible to get an export permit for most vertebrate fossils, perhaps with the exception of some fish and shark teeth. If you see Moroccan fossils for sale outside of Morocco or online, they have almost always been looted, stolen and smuggled out of the country.

Why not start the day with some good news?

I am hoping to continue my career in Natural History Museums, morphology, anatomy, and µCT. So, if any of you know of an upcoming role in Canada, or are looking to collaborate on projects please reach out.

Happy 70th birthday, Homer Simpson!

This has given me a little bit of hope!

A yellowhammer at Fingringhoe Wick on Saturday and a sedge warbler at RSPB Minsmere on Sunday.

Happy Davemas, one and all! My earliest DA memory is Lost Worlds Vanished Lives, which my dad recorded off the tele and I would watch repeatedly. Rediscovering it on DVD in my 20 was a major catalyst in encouraging me to go to university and study biology. #Attenborough100

I can't stress how important it is to see this published (and others like it). Very often we hear things like, "fish endocasts are poor predictors of brain morphology", so it's really great to see people taking the time to actually test this and show the evidence. Nice work!

Reform UK sent this appalling leaflet through our door in Enfield with very divisive and misleading figures. Now the same exact leaflet has been delivered in Suffolk with names and values changed. This is not just one bad candidate, but a template from head office. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A Harvard study just published estimates Elon Musk's destruction of USAID has already caused 600,000 deaths 2/3 of them children. That is his legacy in this world.

I've had a very bird-heavy weekend around NE Essex, with some highlights being numerous nightingales, no fewer than 6 cuckoos, the first painted ladies of the year, and a red kite catching a fish osprey-style from the Colne estuary! #birdsofbluesky

It's official - the #swifts have arrived in Colchester! #beltane

It's been said before, but bears repeating. If you're a UK citizen and live in Dubai/Spain/ anywhere not the UK, then you're not an "expat". You're an immigrant. Fucking double standard Daily Mail cunts.

Raspberry RSI

THE SWIFTS ARE BACK!

Delighted to have attended the launch of ‘Lawyers for Animals’ at Gray’s Inn last night. A new animal law working on prosecuting factory farms, defending animal rights activists and exploring pathways to advance animal rights through the legal system. An inspiring event. Exciting times!

Very telling from the birdfood industry. Despite new RSPB/BTO advice on birdfeeding based on a solid scientific review, and RSPB taking a ££ hit themselves, EVERY major birdfood company is attacking/rejecting the guidance, claiming to know better, putting their incomes over conservation. Shameful.

An interesting thing I've noticed about some UK towns and villages is that they've replaced the traditional small metal 'Welcome to...' sign with a dirty great boulder with the place name carved into it. Not sure why...

In light of the sad news about Desmond Morris, here is my copy of JZ Young's The Life Of Mammals, bought a few years ago in a second hand bookshop down Charing Cross Road and once belonging to the man himself.

Some exciting scenes in North Essex today - a raven mobbing a buzzard! I've never seen a raven in this part of the country before, and it looks like it's here to stay because it returned to its nest (and mate) in the top of a tall pine tree. #birdsofbluesky (photos @samuraipizzakat.bsky.social)

For most of my life I never imagined I'd see this sight in southern England 🦫

So far, Just 18,557 of the 69.86 million people in the UK have donated to help save the Rothbury Estate in #Northumberland. If £13.5 million can be raised by September, this will become the largest new nature reserve in the UK in a generation. Please donate! www.wildlifetrusts.org/appeals/roth...

I love this! The brilliant Holly Dunsworth is reviewing Sapiens, one page at a time, separating myth from fact… Let’s dive in! ecodevoevo.blogspot.com/2026/03/sapi...

New #Postdoc alert! This is a really cool project, working with a great team including the wonderful @drphilcox.bsky.social and @toriherridge.bsky.social. www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

Hi all. I am very excited that after 6 years I finally got my phylogenetic comparative methods book and online exercises online. Feel free to use and share. The book is here: nhcooper123.github.io/pcm-primer/. Note that it is not finished, we had to abandon it before the sunk costs fallacy broke us

Vous voulez faire une thèse sur l'évolution de la tête des squamates au Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle? C'est par ici: adum.fr/as/ed/voirpr... Interested in a PhD on the evolution of the head shape of squamates at the Museum of Natural History of Paris? Here you go: adum.fr/as/ed/voirpr...

Absolutely not. If you are using AI to write you should 100% be ashamed. Shame is one of the last bulwarks against a total slop apocalypse. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/b...

Controversial(?) opinion, but dogs should not be let off their leads in the countryside at all. www.derbyshire.police.uk/news/derbysh...

My full quote to the Times on why it’s bananas to let landowners release 50m pheasants into the British countryside without proper regulations, given their ecological impacts and role as a vector for bird flu:

VICTORY! Government to open up the Land Registry - bringing to an end a thousand years of secrecy shrouding who owns England. I’ve been campaigning for this for ten years: the new Land Use Framework, published later today, makes it government policy. 1/ www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Otto Warburg's grant application: "I need 10,000 marks".

"The results are astonishingly clear. On rewilded land, biodiversity surged across the board, with the number of bird species up 261%. The variety of bumblebee and butterfly species more than doubled, their abundance increased over 10x." The cure for nature loss exists. share.google/w30RUdw1902W...

In the last two weeks, 1% of new NSF awards were in biology. Just one grant of 97. One. Biology in the US is on hold until there’s a regime change.

I’m looking for a post doc (up to five years) interested in phylogenetics and earth systems - please spread the word!

This #FossilFriday I've got a treat for the bird palaeontologists out there. Here are some specimens that we scanned for our recent paper on bird skull/brain skull evolution. All but one are extinct birds from the collections of the @nhm-london.bsky.social www.morphosource.org/media-lists/...

This is not my fess, but it might as well be

Hey fellow scientists, I'm just letting you know that if you're promoting something with some junky AI image, I'm not gonna click. You've got a workshop, a conference, a new paper? Just not gonna bother. You want a bespoke image? Hire an illustrator.