This morning I was interviewed on BBC Radio Gloucestershire and Newcastle on the BGB regarding the new guidance on birdfeeding and my favourite places to bird in the North East! You can listen on BBC sounds from 7am on Glocs and 8:20 on Newcastle 🐦‍⬛🪿🦆🦉

A fantastic week with the EUFLYNET COST Action meeting in Vienna. It was great to hear about all of the projects going on, including an inspiring metabarcoding project. The highlight, a biologging workshop to understand how to use Movebank. Tracking birds is definitely an area I would venture into.

Had an amazing time at BES2025. 1,600 people, my biggest conference! I loved talking about birds, eDNA and ceilidhing. As a final year PhD student it was inspirational and my messages are open to anyone interested in a collaboration, be it a job role or postdoc.

A great day at #BOUasm25. Its interesting attending events not directly related to your project so you can learn about new topics, meet new people and get new ideas. From feather iridescents to parasitic birds, today highlighted the importance of our museum collections and how they benefit Science.

Swifts, the wonderful summer visitors, screeching through the skies. Also, birds in huge decline. It's been wonderful to be involved in the Durham Swift City project with @durhamwildlife.bsky.social, providing more nesting habitats for swifts! See more here: www.durhamwt.com/blog/mary-an...

Thanks to the seabird ringing grant from @btobirds.bsky.social, I spent an incredible week Eilean nan Ròn, advancing my ringing skills! We managed to catch and ring storm petrels, shags, few gull chicks and more! Huge thanks to BTO and the team! All birds ringed under licence @sophiesww.bsky.social

101 bird species, six mammal species, four days, three nights wild camping, two best friends and one hell of a weekend. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Isle of Mull 🦅

Conducted the first BBS of the year before work this morning. Considering we are in Newcastle and next to a motorway we had a really nice variety! Highlights were Greenfinches, a Great Spotted Woodpecker and a Swallow. Topped it off with the traditional bakery trip after! @bbs-birds.bsky.social

Help! Is anyone else finding batch effects between whole genome sequences generated with Illumina NovaSeq6000 vs NovaSeqX? Any suggestions or solutions would be hugely appreciated! 🙏 #PopGen #ConGen #Bioinformatics #Genomics 🧬🖥️🧪

RSPB Highnam Woods at dawn. The forest was alive with song,especially Balckcaps, Wrens, Song Thrushes and Balckbirds. Other highlights were GSW, Marsh Tit, Ravens oh and... my first ever Nightingale! What a cracking song. Got to watch it preen for a few minutes to! #Glosbirds

Hello! I'm a 3rd year PhD student at Newcastle University attending the #BOU2025 conference. Today I will be talking about my research 'Exploring Grey Heron DNA transportation through lake sediment in a spatiotemporal analysis using ddPCR'. #ornithology #eDNA #ddPCR @nclneg.bsky.social 🌍 🦆 1/6

Perfect weekend! Jelaine Gan snd I did a talk on siskins at the North East Ringers Conference. The talks were so interesting and it was great to see so many friends! Topped off with a trip to St. Aidens for a lifer: Black Necked Grebe and of course my faves the bearded reedlings.

A great day out leading a young(ish) birding day out. 52 species with the highlights being Bittern, Barn Owl, Ring-necked Duck and Scaup. Hopefully we've got a few new bird nerds!

A huge thank you to these guys for helping with my Winter Gull Survey for the @btobirds.bsky.social. 2.5 hours in 0 degrees with a freezing wind, only to have no gull roost to count! Somehow we all left with smiles on our faces. Not a bad Sunday!

Had my final day of fieldwork to collect sediment samples for my ddPCR eDNA experiment. It was -2 degrees but I can't complain as look how beautiful it is! This topped with the company of a kingfisher meant it was a nice end to my coring career.

4 years ago as a visitor engager at WWT Slimbridge, before my ringing days, I used a toy Bewick's swan to show kids how scientists wrapped them up and took measurements. Today I got to unwrap a real Bewick's and release it! Definitely a full circle moment for me 😊

Thought my first post should introduce myself. I'm a 3rd year PhD student @newcastleuni.bsky.social using eDNA to look at how biodiversity has changed in British ponds over the last 200 years. I'm an avid birder so normally you'll find me bird watching or ringing. I particularly love seabirds!