Birds That Don't Exist: Niche Pre‐Emption as a Constraint on Morphological Evolution in the Passeroidea - Chia - 2026 - Ecology Letters - Wiley Online Library onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

So this is an exciting rediscovery www.birdguides.com/news/rusty-b... and ebird.org/checklist/S2...

I visited Grenada some weeks ago, and was very surprised to see the (small) area completely open, with lots of stray dogs and people walking their dogs off leash… a bit worrying. Fingers crossed for the future!

why do males defend territories in some species while pairs or family groups defend territories in others? then-undergrad Shreyas Arashanapalli did a fantastic project to find out, analyzing 3177 playback experiments on 264 species the best predictor? latitude academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

There are few Baikal Teal (Sibirionetta formosa 花脸鸭 Huāliǎn yā) wintering at the Yellow River estuary in Shandong Province. Photo by "菜小hua". #birds #china #yellowriver

New paper links Salmonellosis disease dynamics to avian irruptions mediated by transmission at bird feeders - with subsequent spillover to humans causing severe illness and death 🪶🌎 #ornithology #UKBirding www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #BirdFeeding #Rethink @mwtingley.bsky.social

All the best for 2026 to all our authors, readers and reviewers In case you have missed it and need a weekend reading: issue 6 of 2025 is closed. Full issue ⬇️ vist.ly/4n6me Cover credit: Tómas G. Gunnarsson, featuring Pálsdóttir et al ⬇️ vist.ly/4n6mg #ornithology #birds #science

Feeling unusually organized today, NOT, but I do have all my ducks in a row! Surf Scoter, Dipper Harbour, #NewBrunswick, #Canada #birds #nature #wildlife #birdphotography

🚨 PhD offer (please share) Fascinated by bird migration and movement ecology? 🦜🌍 Join us at @vogelwarte.bsky.social to study annual cycle energetics with multi-sensor loggers in multiple species Deadline: 20 Feb 2026 Starting: June 2026 Supervision: Martins Briedis & me Info: tinyurl.com/2dbv9nzh

🚨 New paper out in @ecography.bsky.social ! 📝 Led by Dr. Søren Faurby, we built upon the estimated unrecorded bird extinctions by @r-cooke.bsky.social et al. 2023 and try to estimate the corresponding unrecorded loss of phylogenetic diversity. 🦤🧬 Check the full paper here: doi.org/10.1002/ecog...

Christmas can be an expensive time of year, so how about something for free? The @scottishbirding.bsky.social and Scottish Birds Records Committee are hosting a FREE online conference over the evenings of February 24th to the 26th. Three talks per night and some real belters among them.

Swiss Breeding Bird Monitoring dataset is now openly accessible! The team from @vogelwarte.bsky.social made the long-term dataset of the Swiss CBM program (“Monitoring Häufige Brutvögel”, MHB) freely available under CC-BY 4.0 licence. esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Happy to share our new paper published in @cp-iscience.bsky.social We deployed 300+ multi-sensor loggers across 17 species to investigate how different species adapt their flight strategies when crossing deserts and marine areas during migration. tinyurl.com/2c8y8xvf #ornithology #birds

A thread on our latest publication – a publication we worked > 10 years on. 🙃 This project has driven us mad at times. But in the end, it has made it onto the cover of tomorrow’s issue of @ScienceMagazine, so I suppose it was worth it... 😅 1/

These are the relevant morphometrics to measure on a flycatcher. Although absolute measurements are very helpful, relative metrics, essentially proportions, are just as useful. These are the features that can be measured from photos or what you see, with some training, in the field.

New paper out! 🐦📊 We realease AVONICHE, a global dataset with detailed information on the proportional use of 32 foraging niches, combining dietary categories with the behaviours and substrates used to access resources. Openly access the paper and data in GEB: doi.org/10.1111/geb....

When one of your PhD students makes you very jealous… I believe the first Azure Tit for Norway this afternoon near Trondheim

Super cool new study from Talavera lab on migratory divide between painted lady (Vanessa cardui) populations north of the equator and south of the equator! They find a candidate gene that might be associated with the differenc ein behaviour. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

What a way to start the year on my local patch. Landed on the beach for a few minutes then flew off west.

Based on thousands of citizen-science observations across Italy, our study shows that many hunted game bird species 🐦 start their pre-breeding migration earlier than reported in the European Commission’s “Key Concepts Document” (KCD) 🇪🇺 www.researchgate.net/publication/...

NEW JOB in #ornithology with @vogelwarte.bsky.social to unravel the demographic drivers of population change in Alpine #swifts in #Switzerland: buff.ly/crV1rT8

New paper out. If you like colorful birds, hybridization, and phylogenetics, read on! 🧵https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003501

BIG day for warbler genomes, with work led by @kevinfpbennett.bsky.social! Whole genomes nearly *every species* of warbler. Warblers the most "Pokémon" of the bird world? Well, they're also trading their coloration genes like valuable collectors cards ... www.psu.edu/news/eberly-... 🦉🧪

Incredibly honoured and happy to have been awarded a consolidator grant from the ERC! This grant will expand my group and fund my research at @biologylu.bsky.social for five years, and focus on different factors that disrupt animal migration at large scales 🦅🦋🌍🧲💡🌡️. Exciting times ahead!

📣Please share: We are looking for a field assistant to join our team in studying #ruffs on coastal meadows at Botnian Bay in Finland. The job will provide fantastic insights into lekking behaviour and provide essential skills in field ornithology. Details here www.bi.mpg.de/2790786/2512...

Seed dispersal by 🦜🦇 underpins rainforest recovery. We want to understand more about its timing + traits driving recovery through obs, exp + genomic data. Ready to join the @reassemblynet.bsky.social team working in Ecuadorian Chocó? Pls apply to our 4-yr PhD position @sgn.one: tinyurl.com/2pkryc99

Check out our cover article by @timjanicke.bsky.social and colleagues about the role of sexual selection in animal speciation. academic.oup.com/evlett/artic.... The beautiful illustration is by Katharina Bóth.

We've partnered on a groundbreaking global bird study revealing how human-driven habitat changes put biodiversity, and vital bird roles, at risk. 🐦 Dr. Alexander Lees stresses the urgent need to protect the diversity of avian roles 👉 https://bit.ly/4ixI4tl

Cold sweat time, my first thought on seeing these images is that they are the product of Generative AI on account of missing/deformed feet. Could this however just be manipulation of a real image of an extralimital Willow Tit? Never had to even consider these issues before.... #UKBirding

Time to publish responsibly: DAFNEE, a database of academia-friendly journals in ecology and evolutionary biology url: academic.oup.com/jeb/article/...

Huge News from the Western Amazon: it's the year 2025 and we are still describing entirely new, strikingly-distinctive large-bodied bird species! Behold Tinamus resonans sp. nov. the Slaty-masked Tinamou mapress.com/zt/article/v... #Ornithology @tetzoo.bsky.social 🪶

🎤 We’re excited to introduce another plenary speaker for the 5th EOU Fledglings Meeting in Gdańsk (27–29 March 2026)! 🌿 Miriam Liedvogel (@genmig.bsky.social) will share her work on blackcap migration - a fascinating look into one of Europe’s most dynamic songbird species. #EOU26 #Ornithology

🧵1/5 Excited about our new paper in PRSB! @royalsocietypublishing.org Can AI make research on avian brood parasitism easier? YES! We show that AI model can identify conspecific parasitic eggs better than an average ornithologist. doi.org/10.1098/rspb... 📸 Barn swallow – our study species.

An exciting morning on Masirah Island when this odd looking pipit landed in front of me and gave an odd call. A great Wise Birding team effort to secure everything needed to confirm id as Oman’s 1st Paddyfield Pipit. Big thanks to Magnus Robb for confirming sound recording. #Birds #Oman #WiseBirding

Genetic confirmation of an “uncommon mourningthroat” (Geothlypis philadelphia  ×  G. trichas): A rare but persistent hybrid warbler | www.tandfonline.com/... | Wilson Journal of Ornithology | #ornithology 🪶

Our new paper is out today in Journal of the Royal Society Interface (link below). All about eggshell roughness: "Scratching beyond the surface: examining macroecological patterns in avian eggshell texture". Congrats first author Marie Attard, and thank you @leverhulme.ac.uk for the funding.

GREAT NEWS in #conservation: the government of New Zealand has announced that they will include feral cats in their PredatorFree 2050 strategy, aiming to benefit #seabirds and landbirds across NZ by removing feral cats:

Even consummate migrants like Corncrakes can end up being ship-assisted, although presumably being adopted by a family and fed prawns is a rarer occurrence.... #UKBirding #Ornithology www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/2563328...

Just out in Systematic Biology, we explore the role of gene flow in island phylogeography of the Solomons Black-and-white Monarch complex. doi.org/10.1093/sysb... Up first, strong genetic structure between islands groups and weak (but present!) structure between Pleistocene-connected islands (🧵)

Earlier today, I was notified that someone was at my door. This is who it was:

We visited plaine de Crau (S France) to catch Richard’s pipits last week and sample feathers for isotope tests. Numbers were low (~10), though more birds usually stop here at this time of year (up to 30/40) before they move south. Unclear if birds left early or had a poor breeding year.. #birds

On the train back home, still buzzing from some great days at @vogelwarte.bsky.social where Hans Schmid wrote "Getrennte Wege" - a classic synthesis of Honey Buzzard migration. A quarter century later the species has revealed a few more, but still not all of its migratory "Geheimnisse". #ornithology

I’ve released a tool to sketch and edit phylogenetic trees! yawak.jp/PhyloWeaver/ Load a Newick file and intuitively add/remove/resize branches. Useful for quick conceptual trees, extracting subtrees, or turning ideas into Newick.

This Swallow at Balranald, N Uist this afternoon appears to be the American subspecies: erythrogaster due to the lack of a dark band across the lower throat.

This is such a cool study. A parasitic ant queen tricks worker ants into murdering their own queen, so the parasite can take over the colony.

Going to be a big month for warbler science! First out of the gates is @lannhiphung.bsky.social, with song & genomics of Nashville warblers. Eastern and western subspecies: non-overlapping and super distinct. Keep an eye on your life list 😉 🦉🧪@journal-evo.bsky.social academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

After a month of research in #Porcupinebank on board #VizcondedeEza in the wild waters west of #Ireland, we're finally at home! The most amazing #seabird sighting was a South Polar skua! @rspb.bsky.social @irishbirds.bsky.social @ieo-cadiz.bsky.social Ireland waters are always a box of surprises!

Our last paper describes the spring-accelerated loop-migration of the Woodchat Shrike, tracked with light- and multi-sensor geolocators link.springer.com/article/10.1... #ornithology

Nice paper by @paulcuchot.bsky.social!