A very early drumming great spotted woodpecker. Not sure I've heard one as early as this before. #ukbirds

This week’s seminar will be given by Prof Daniel Field of @zoologymuseum.bsky.social & @cambridge-earthsci.bsky.social on the origins of modern birds. 3.30pm Friday 28 Nov in LT1 in the Life & Mind Building @biology.ox.ac.uk - all welcome & see below for live streaming joining information

MSc internship / Field Assistant position available in our group! Impact of urbanisation on avian reproduction 🐦🏙️ 🌳 Deadline: 7 Nov 2025 All details 👉 www.uni-bielefeld.de/fakultaeten/... Please share it around!

More Mapping the UK's Flat Flies Project results published today with Adrian Smith & @sheldonbirds.bsky.social 212 host-parasite interactions, including 70 not previously reported, & a recent switch to gulls by some Louse Flies, Hippoboscidae. @btobirds.bsky.social @dipteristsforum.bsky.social

Interested in a PhD in ornithology? Funding available for projects at the interface of ecology, behaviour & evolution from Oct '26 working on long-term population studies of tits at Wytham, based in @biology.ox.ac.uk in the new Life & Mind Building in Oxford www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

The last things I want to be doing is talking to tech. It's so frustrating.

Has there been an irruption of Red Crossbills this year? Second time in a week I've found a small flock in Wytham Woods, having previously seen none in 12 years here. #ukbirding

📢🚨Please share! We’re hiring! 📢🚨Have a strong interests in wildlife ecology and gut microbiome bioinformatics? 3 year Senior Research Associate for NERC Pushing the Frontiers grant. Apply here: vacancies.uea.ac.uk/vacancies/18.... Informal enquiries welcome! drgldavidson.github.io/ACMEresearch

Good to know that at least some of scarcities that pitch up on godforsaken migration headlands thrive after they arrive: this Wryneck just retrapped in the Crown Estate Field has increased its weight by 12% in just two days

Quick walk around the woods just now, noticed a commotion at the big old beech. A flock of tits were jumping in and out of the water filled crotch (I believe thats the technical term)

"Fight the pain" Pay close attention to this kind of language because normalising and/or belittling women's pain is rank misogyny

NEW on the #BOUdiversityBlog from Emily Piccinini-Edelsten On being a bird: A woman’s experience of training to ring bou.org.uk/blog-picc...#BOUdiversityBlog #ornithology 🪶

Interested in animal welfare, education policy & social research? Fully funded PhD (UK home) on dog welfare in schools. Get in touch & apply: www.cam-dtp.ac.uk/students/cur... (Dog photo purely for attention and moral support) #PhDopportunity #AnimalWelfare #DogsInSchools #CamDTP #SocialResearch

I was like, what are dog scales?

@devisatarkar.bsky.social gave beautiful talk on the extent to which social network traits are heritable vs. shaped by the spatial & social environment at birth using long-term data on blue tits 🐣🧬 @behaviour2025.bsky.social @asab.org

@secondcaptains.bsky.social is that a new genre of non-celebration celebration from Eketike? You can't celebrate against a club that tried to buy you?

Don’t get played by false information. Learn how to spot and stop it before it spreads 👇

Buy a Tesla and listens to Musk by proxy.

white people in 2025.

Haven't had a chance to do much birding in France so far but found a family of spotted flycatchers today and what I think is a middle spotted woodpecker.

So far France is incredibly beautiful. Not seen many birds yet. Hoping to catch a bearded vulture or a nutcracker as we head up into the mountains.

In France and I don't know what this sign means nor do I care to, all I can think of is this. #got

New paper led by Jinggang Zhang just out in @royalsocietypublishing.org! We show that nestling redstarts learn to respond to calls of other species if hear them together with alarm calls of their own species doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

Had a Mere wainscot in my trap the other day. Looks like there aren't many records of this moth in Oxfordshire. #moths #ukmoths

Quick stroll to stretch the legs in Wytham woods just now. Lots of Gatekeeper butterflies out and almost stepped on this Dark bush cricket 🦗

Like many 'populations' the great tits in Wytham are a meta-population, with extensive immigration. We know very little about who & what immigrants are - here @andreaestandia.bsky.social et al use genomic data to try to understand origins & consequences of immigrants www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New preprint: Using pedigree data + genomics from 2,684 great tits in Wytham Woods, we explore spatial genetic structure and the role of dispersal, population turnover and immigration 🐦 With @sheldonbirds.bsky.social @nilomr.bsky.social @jon-slate.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Today is a good day to reflect on the incredible work @younghorgan.bsky.social, @secondcaptains.bsky.social, and BBC Sounds undertook for and around the Where Is George Gibney? podcast. It remains a brilliant, thorough, hugely empathic and influential piece of journalism.

Really enjoying my new job teaching Biology in London, but the sunny weather has me missing the early Wytham mornings during the field season 🌳 An old video I made of the '23 field season working for @egioxford.bsky.social & @biology.ox.ac.uk takes me back: www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-rm...

Finally had a buff tip in the garden moth trap. Favourite of my 5yr old.

Horrible night for sleeping last night, but amazing diversity in my moth trap. 255 moths of 45 species. Majority were Bird-cherry ermine and water veneer(all dead, males die once they mate with wingless females). But lots of new species too. #ukmoths #moths

First small elephant hawk moth for my garden, pictured next to an elephant hawk moth. #ukmoths #moths

Interested in Postdoc Research here in Oxford? Many projects possible using long-term population studies of birds, field & lab experiments with insect consumers, phenology of trees all in Wytham woods & based in new Biology building marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/calls/msca-p...

Me and my sister know every word of the original Spaceballs, or at least we did when I was 9. I didn't get *all* the jokes. Rural Ireland in the '80s didn't have many Jewish folk.

Another new moth for me in our building at work. A Clay triple lines. Larvae feed on Beech, which we're surrounded by here. #ukmoths

“Females are too emotional to be in leadership” they say as the richest man in the world and the president of the United States cry tweet in an online beef

The stuff of nightmares. Hen fleas. Sure sign of an empty nest box. Just waiting for something warm blooded to get close so they can launch themselves onto it. Not today, hen fleas. Not today.

One of many ticks I've picked off my trousers today. Never seen so many. Despite my defensive operation (all clothes tucked in, tick wash, insect repellent) I'll be amazed if I get out of the woods today without one attached somewhere.

New moth for me, on the bathroom window at work. Pretty chalk carpet.

A herd(?) of elephant hawk moths in the trap this morning, plus the monster Privet hawk moth.

One of our breeding females. She's lost practically every feather on her head. Not uncommon in our breeding birds. Could be due to a range of things; stresses and strains of raising a brood, feather mites could be involved too. She'll begin her annual moult soon and these feathers will be replaced

Freeze frame. Record scratch. You might but wondering how I got here. The eagled eyed among you might notice that there are 2 blue tits in amongst this brood of great tits. Mini 🧵

A rogues gallery of great tits captured today for crimes against research. The offence: breeding without proper ID. They've all been ringed (banded) and tagged (RFID ankle bracelets). They'll now be monitored as part of Wytham tit project. All released under caution. @egioxford.bsky.social #ukbirds

Sunrise over Oxford from Wytham woods. Not sure why I bothered with the photo it never looks as good as the real thing.

Jesus at least then the Tories were at this crap you could at least say you didn't vote for them.

Footage of a natural Marsh tit nest in Wytham woods.

Lots of Cuckoo flowers in Wytham woods this year, hopefully a good year for Orange tip butterflies. Here's a photo of one of their eggs on the plant (that orange speck)

Cuckoo calling near Thames path in Wytham Woods. #ukbirds

We had an early morning visitor to our garden pond this morning. Hope they weren't eating the newts! Probably just getting a drink in the recent dry spell.