After last year’s successful pilot study, GPS-tracking @gullbilledterns-de.bsky.social's birds, we’re back at it this year. The lovely bird @harrykuipers.bsky.social photographed is L39, a 5-yr old female, breeding with 4-yr old R75 on nest 8. She laid two eggs that both hatched successfully.

The 2-year-olds have started to arrive en masse and, with 83, now make up 18% of the registered birds at the colony. At 470 of those, we are exactly 70 above the number we had this time last year. Food is looking good too, and the chicks are growing nicely. ❤️

🚨We're hiring again, this time for a research assistant position 🚨 The position is to help with a project looking at learning and social behaviour in birds along an urban gradient Position at @ceec-research.bsky.social 📆28th June deadline More info: shorturl.at/vBxiW #ringing #fieldwork

Bugging is underway, and we are missing @matteobeccardi.bsky.social who spent two seasons supplementing the team to collect data on sex- and age-specific mitochondrial functioning in the terns. His paper on this just came out in @jexpbiol.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1242/jeb....

In other lovely news: the breeding season of @gullbilledterns-de.bsky.social is well underway too and parents of the first three nests have been identified. Here are L28 and L13, last-year sweethearts, this year breeding at nest 3. More news on the blog: gelochelidon.de/home. :-)

Look who arrived as well! 147 little field assistants made their way into one of our incubators. These laboratory-bred kissing bugs will help us collect blood samples from incubating terns. Stored in a fake egg for c. 20 minutes, they collect blood, which we then gratefully collect from them.

The first eggs of the 2026 season are a fact. Four clutches were started yesterday, today we're at nine. ❤️

📣 #PhDOpportunity in Geelong, Australia Ever wondered how urbanisation affects sleep in birds? 🐦 Interested in #behaviouralecology and #biologging? Come and work with me and Kate Buchanan at @deakinuniversity.bsky.social! Applications close 31 May Details: www.deakin.edu.au/study/fees-a...

How lovely! @tcansse.bsky.social installed a camera at one of the islands that make up the Banter See colony, and so we can see that the birds have started to spend the night on site now. ❤️

Some very happy news on this Monday: over the weekend, two of our GPS-tagged gull-billed terns returned to Neufelderkoog and started uploading their data to the hub. Although the data transfer is not yet complete, both seem to have spent their winter in Guinea-Bissau.

One week in, 149 birds have been registered. Among them is 25-yr-old Roy, currently the oldest bird of the population, after most other elderly terns died during the HPAI outbreaks of 2022 and 2023.

We are looking for a full-time, permanent, animal caretaker in Wilhelmshaven. Work with songbirds & quail in an international research team: - Bird care & welfare - Breeding programs - Hand-rearing chicks - Husbandry & hygiene - Data records More info: ifv-vogelwarte.de/en/institute...

Out now in Environmental Monitoring and Assessment: a study in which we assessed whether mercury levels vary among feather types within individual terns, how feather mercury levels relate to those in blood, and whether all levels vary with sex and age in a similar way: doi.org/10.1007/s106...

Wow, after 8 birds arrived on the 12th of April, 57 more arrived on the 13th! I've not seen an 'arrival-explosion' like it. The birds seem excited about it too, wasting no time between arrival, courtship and the start of 'nest building'.

📢Fully-funded #PhD opportunity with us: 🐦 Quantifying (social) learning and social behaviour in an urbanised world 🐦 Position at @ceec-research.bsky.social 📆29th May deadline More info: tinyurl.com/yz28s96x Apply: tinyurl.com/2wpkb64y #cognition #socialbehaviour #fieldwork #birds 🙏Please Share

As an update: 6 more birds were registered by the system yesterday, such that 8 birds are known to have arrived in total, with more spotted today. Synchronous, but not early, as the first-arrival summary-graph for the years 1994-2026 shows:

Live from the field: they’re here! The first two registrations of the 2026 season are a fact and go to Calderon and Pricilla. ❤️

Among 480 (!!) birds caught by #TeamSAFRINGSénégal last night, there were 4 Banter See birds, including 5-yr old Piccolo, who prospected in 2023 and bred in 2024 and 2025, receiving a geolocator in 2025. After a quick check, he is now on his way to us! ❤️ Thanks to Bruno Portier for the photo!

A huge thank you to all organisers, volunteers, presenters, poster contributors, and participants for making #EOU26 such a great conference! 🐦 Enjoy the rest of your time in Gdańsk, and have a safe journey home—no matter how far you’re travelling!

Have any of your biologging devices ever failed? ⁉️ If so, we’d like to hear from you! 👂 Researchers at Acadia University, Nova Scotia, are investigating biologger device failure rates to help improve research practices. 🎓 The survey takes just 10 minutes to complete: forms.gle/fZW9n2dojJVB...

The observation huts and rat protection are up. It's beginning to look a lot like the breeding season of 2026. Thanks to yet another dreamteam this season!❤️

Pan-tropical Wedge-tailed Shearwaters are making the most of a warming climate as they establish in higher latitude sites in Eastern Australia. Penny Beaver’s MSc paper uncovers the flexibility of the species by examining two islands in subtropical and temperate sites. dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3...

Today we celebrate ‘Dress for STEM Day’, and wear purple clothes to celebrate all women in #STEM (#science, #technology, #engineering, #mathematics) and raise awareness to the underrepresentation of women in these fields.

I’m so over-the-moon happy to share that our lovely @mjgarciabianco.bsky.social, so far with us as a fellow funded by @sfb1372.bsky.social, will be able to continue her work in the common tern team as a PhD student, co-funded by ANID and the @daadworldwide.bsky.social.

📣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...

There are still two more weeks to apply for the PhD position on nematodes, isotopes, metals and PFAS in the terns. Don't be shy to reach out when having questions about it either. :-)

Do you never ask if a female #bird always lays #eggs of a certain appearance? We tried do answer this question in the common terns. Follow the link for more: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... @commonternproject.bsky.social @ifv-whv.bsky.social @ecophycebc.bsky.social @univ-larochelle.fr

🐦 EcoBird is hiring a Postdoc in animal cognition! Join us + @themanybirds.bsky.social to investigate innovation & problem-solving in birds. 📅 Start: as early as Jan 2026 🌍 Funded through UGent’s international mobility scheme More info & how to apply ↓ www.ugent.be/en/work/scie...

There’s one month left to apply for the PhD position on interactions between contaminants and parasites in common terns, co-supervised by @alicecarravieri.bsky.social, Bernd Sures from @unidue.bsky.social and myself. You can do so here: euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/380142

Want your modelling to save birds? PhD with me at UvA (Amsterdam): build spatial integrated population model for black-tailed godwits with world-class dataset and strong team here & @birdeyes-gfn.bsky.social/RUG). werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies... Apply by 1 Dec 2025: #Ecology #Bayesian #Conservation

📢 PhD opportunity at @cebc-chizelab.bsky.social @ifv-whv.bsky.social @unidue.bsky.social 🎓 Interactions between contaminants and parasites in common terns 📅 Apply by 12/12/2025 at euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/380142 #seabirds #ecotoxicology @univ-larochelle.fr @commonternproject.bsky.social

We’re hiring a doctoral researcher in the area of migration ecology. The work will focus on the question of how and when migratory songbirds learn where their home is using #Motus. Part of the Cluster of Excellence NaviSense and linked with @sfb1372.bsky.social uol.de/job788en #ornithology

You are what you eat! 🍣 Concentrations of #traceelements in seals were linked to #diet which were influenced by #environmental and #climate indices. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Congratulations @alixkristiansen.bsky.social on your first paper from your PhD - it's out! @ecobird.bsky.social journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Out @animalecology.bsky.social today - a paper with David Ewing in which we explore the #HPAI outbreak in the terns. We find bird-to-bird transmission to be the main driver of infection and estimate the probability of mortality to drop from 0.26 to 0.14 from 2022 to 2023: doi.org/10.1111/1365...

When we hypothesised female terns to have lower mercury levels than males due to egg laying, @matteobeccardi.bsky.social et al designed an elegant experiment to prove the effectiveness of this pathway. That proof just got published & the open access paper can be found here: doi.org/10.1016/j.en...

Spread the word: we’re #hiring! We offer two short-term #fellowships for master’s degree holders and PhD candidates for 6-12 months to excellent researchers, who are interested in doing research within one dedicated project of our SFB/CRC 1372. Find more information on www.sfb1372.de/jobs

Happy to share my last PhD paper where we investigated the istopic niche of black-faced cormorants both for the breeding season and the non-breeding period. doi.org/10.1080/0158... #seabirds #ornithology

Out now in Environmental Research – Anna’s new paper in which she assesses the levels of 118 contaminants in unhatched eggs and dead chicks found in the last and endangered population of gull-billed terns in Central Europe, breeding at Neufelderkoog: doi.org/10.1016/j.en...

NEW on the #BOUdiversityBlog from Jamie Dunning Why I don’t want to talk about my neurodivergence bou.org.uk/blog-dunn...#BOUdiversityBlog #ornithology 🪶

Hey Camera Trappers 📸🐺🐗🦌🦅Snapshot Europe is back for 2025! Join us in deploying cameras this Sept-Oct. Help build a crucial snapshot of European biodiversity. Learn more & express interest here ▶️ app.wildlifeinsights.org/initiatives/... Spread the word and help expand our community across Europe🙏

And here it is - Justine's last thesis chapter got accepted too and can now be read as an open access paper in Environmental Research: doi.org/10.1016/j.en...

Happy to share our newest paper in which we investigated the non-breeding distribution of Australasian gannets #seabirds #ornithology @aurore-counilh.bsky.social www.int-res.com/abstracts/me...

Fresh siblings and lots of chick ringing during today’s check of the colony. Even the rain held off to let us do our job. 🐣

Live from the field: the first 4 chicks of 2025 have hatched. ❤️ #babyboom

The Banter See season in numbers so far: we have registered 372 birds, 189 nests have been initiated, 42 blood samples have been collected and 28 birds have been caught to attach or remove a geolocator. Next up: chick ringing. Hatching should start any day now. ❤️

Let us introduce you to the Banter See common tern team 2025. :-)

We use blood-sucking bugs to collect blood samples from the terns without them realising we do so. This 'bugging' process started today, and thanks to Justine & María Jesús the first 3 samples of 2025 are in the pocket.

Whereas first arrival has advanced over the long-term study, first laying hasn't (and the same holds true when we look at the averages). Still, 2025 is a fairly early year, as there are only 8 years with an earlier first egg versus 23 with a later first egg. #phenology #seabirds