Middlewick Ranges, Colchester, Essex - aerial view. Military training land since the 1800s, long owned by the UK Ministry of Defence and tied to Colchester’s historic garrison. Now at the centre of fierce debate over plans for 1,000 new homes. #Colchester #Aerial

A fast animal such as a hare killed by a throwing stick? Quite feasible, English poachers could catch hares with a thrown coat, if you stay motionless hares will walk right up to you (if your scent not giving you away). I've had them do so when by a gate or other path a hare is wont to travel.

Pastor meaning shepherd, his staff has a crook and at the other end a tool for digging up pasture 'weeds'. Title page of The Workes of Benjamin Jonson (1616)

As a result of this find, I have decided to create a new page on BMS website for plant anomalies to collate images & resources in an easy to access place. If anyone has good photos and would like them to be added (with credit) please let me know @jeremybartlett.bsky.social @amiesphilip.bsky.social

Interested in plants? This is a valuable paper, vascular plants are sessile, they have a high degree of plasticity, which enhances their ability to cope with the environment and other organisms, plant cells and genomics shows how plants do this, in ways few animals can.

🎉 Great news! The paper ‘Drought during a key post-fire stage for recovery success filters plants with enhanced fitness under water stress in a Mediterranean obligate seeder’ in @annbot by @davidsalesad.bsky.social & @vmsantana.bsky.social is now #free for 2 weeks 🧵(1/6) 👉 doi.org/q98f #AoBpapers

An early step on the long strange road to photosynthesis www.quantamagazine.org/an-early-ste...

Elle Cordova @ellecordova.bsky.social

Awesome, enjoyed the Hemmingway "Lets watch some birds".

NEW Multidisciplinary study finds evidence for a previously unknown Iron Age funerary tradition stretching around Scotland’s northern coast, indicating complex interactions between the living and the dead connected people across the sea. 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy... 🏺 #Archaeology

Wooden remains of a later prehistoric trackway at Lisheen, Ireland, damaged during industrial peat extraction. Peatlands preserve organic archaeological remains but face many threats. We need to act now to save this fragile heritage. 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy... 🏺 #Archaeology

NEW PUBLICATION on Bird 🦆 Hunting 🔫. Huge piece of work from across @universityofessex.bsky.social @uniexecec.bsky.social Adonis Blue - #ecological impacts of #recreational #hunting in protected areas - recommendations for evidence led #regulation publications.naturalengland.org.uk/publication/...

The scale of the Megaloceros horns is incredible (Zoology museum of the Jagellonian University). They grown them in a single year and then shed it, and repeated the cycle next year. How on Earth they acquired sufficient amount of minerals and nutrients? 🧪⚒️ #Paleobio #EvoBio

This paper is well worth reading, the caveats around the conclusion nuance the claim as a good paper should, more research is needed, while egalitarian equality is not proved enough evidence is shown to suggest a simple narrative that agriculture and settlement produces inequality is not either.

Quicksand was not as my childhood assured me a constant risk, neither are giant clams it seems, at least Tufty did not lie about traffic.

Scientists have developed a new tool that makes bird genomes faster and easier to assemble — including tiny pieces of DNA that are usually missed. 🐦‍⬛ The new tool, known as MicroFinder, could help improve research into bird evolution, biodiversity and conservation. 👇 http://bit.ly/4wG023C

New research at Mohenjo-Daro, a major Indus Valley city, found inequality fell as it developed, linking reduced inequality to collective governance. Could current governments learn from this to reduce inequality today? #WednesdayWisdom 🏺 #Archaeology 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

The co-presidents of COP 31 have announced a target of 35% electrification as a percentage of Final Energy. Electrification is absolutely the right target, but percentage of Final Energy is the wrong metric. What we really need is data on Useful Energy! mliebreich.substack.com/p/lets-targe...

Woodcock carrying a chick by Roland Green.

Terrestrial and naval telescopes (draw tube). Circa 1625: introduction of a single erecting lens in the Keplerian telescope to produce an erect image by Christoph Scheiner.

Freshly published! My new paper exploring Aquatic Plants as part of a special issue on Plant Evolution in @currentbiology.bsky.social authors.elsevier.com/a/1nEdl3QW8S... @biology.ox.ac.uk @ox.ac.uk

Lemaire field glasses (1890), 6-8 power (x), 23mm objective, central focusing of two Galilean telescopes, narrow field of view, poor viewing in low light conditions.

More grey feathers in the cap than a bird I saw in Somerset in the 1980s which had a pure rusty-brown cap like Italian Sparrow, glad that some 45 years later molecular biology gives me a likely explanation for what I saw.

"a ‚significant' p-value between 0.01 and 0.05 should be interpreted with the expectation that the effect is exaggerated by more than 50% (median 1.56) and that an exact replication has about a one-in-three chance of also being significant." evidenceinthewild.com/p-value-look...

There is a technical term historians use to describe interpretations like this. It’s: ‘Bollocks’. Factually incorrect, deeply wrong-minded, and actually just plain silly

Satellite maps of sinking coastlines come under scrutiny- Radar studies produce contradictory results, complicating efforts to gauge sea level rise in vulnerable areas | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

I saw an Italian Sparrow look alike in Somerset in the 1980s, seems some House Sparrows look like Italian Sparrows.

An interesting paper, potentially a good usage. Tadorna tadorna shows specialized feeding ecology on coastal tidal flats and estuaries, sifts through mud with a scything bill motion to filter out small invertebrates especially Hydrobia ulvae. Tadorna ferruginea is more terrestrial, grazes.

This is a really interesting use of genetic algorithms. And a smart choice of subject - ducks have long been a notorious identification challenge. 🦆🦆

Now online in Journal of #Ornithology High-resolution telemetry reveals a globally important migration bottleneck for Lesser Spotted Eagles (Clanga pomarina) on the shores of Lake Tanganyika Open access link.springer.com/article/10.1...

New paper out in New Phytologist 🌱 After centuries of research in Europe, we have studied only ~37% of all seed-dispersal interactions. Birds of prey, ants, and rodents are among the most understudied - yet researchers rarely flag them as gaps! nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🧬 New paper in Cell! Analysis of 12 cave lion genomes shows that cave lions and modern lions may have diverged more than three times earlier than previously thought – as early as 1.7 million years ago! AND…they interbred when temperatures dropped! Paper: www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... 🧵 1/9

Dear archaeologists. Any idea what/when these shards of pottery are? I find them in the Somerset Levels. These ones were turned up near Athelney in the spoils while digging a ditch. Medieval? Roman? Last Tuesday? :)

Genetic Diversity is important! And we need to monitor it to stop further loss. This should be done at local and international scale in policy and management. If you want to read more - read this review, led by the amazing Australian dream team: #consgen 🦤 www.nature.com/articles/s44...

📄Out now 📄: 90-year trends in Switzerland show declines in butterfly and saproxylic beetle richness around the mid-20th century, linked to agricultural mechanisation. Some groups have recovered in recent decades, especially warm-adapted species. Specialised and cold-adapted species remained low.🦋🪲

Very exciting and disorientating to see this important (re) discovery from Nash et al. Important implications come with this. Why was it so comprehensively dismissed? Was late glacial recolonisation possible earlier than thought? What else are we missing? 🦣🏺 www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

danah boyd recently argued that social media (as we knew it) is mostly dead; what we have now is parasocial media: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... I agree. Networked social media is disappearing, replaced by a new logic/structure of content creator, creator-centered community, & algorithm.

Tabitha Paterson's brilliant artwork for @unravellingpalaeo.bsky.social is a challenge to the status quo, the idea people werent in Britain 125,000 years ago. It shows animals from the last interglacial, but includes the people and stone tools which some people have stopped looking for. 🦣🏺

Interesting to compare clothing of a district commissioner of the British Empire. player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/wa...

Cherry Kearton was amongst the first to photograph and film wildlife in Africa, long-sleaved shirt, trousers, high boots, pith helmet.

A long account in @lrb.co.uk by Stefan Collini of the causes of what feels like a death spiral for UK Universities. Recent estimates are that UK HE contributes >£130Bn annually to the UK economy, resulting in >750 000 jobs across all regions of the UK lordslibrary.parliament.uk/higher-educa...

I wish more people would read and share some of the extensive and accessible literature critiquing tree-planting programs in semi-arid desert margins (and the whole concept of desertification, for that matter) rather than promoting stories about tortoises in the Sahel.

The attack on sciences and humanities is about controlling the narrative, knowledge and how to question is dangerous to vested interests. eos.org/research-and...

I was unsure but now am convinced that Starmer is a Blair want to be, his only interest is in leveraging this step in his career for personal gain. Sad, I had little hope, he is an unappealing man, he may have had the integrity of the in his day ambitious Brown who fundamentally does have values.

Such vibrant colours.

Eriospermum paradoxum has crazy, next-level enations! The tiny leaf produces highly branched enations on the surface of the leaf. The leaf looks like a miniature shrub. Truly bizarre! 📷1: Marienne de Villiers CCBYNC4 📷2: Shannon Fletcher CCBYNC4 5/5

In the Horror section; Ghouls.

Tony Blair seeks money, he gained influence by aligning with neocons during Bush era, he has worked to remain influential which makes him richer, hard to know at this point what matters most to him, influence or money, both are intertwined in his world.

Grass Vetchling not flowering here yet, found three this morning, colonised my 'lawn' in recent years (I removed a gravel and membrane garden the developer made) a plant species of the coastal grassland near my garden, natural colonisation gradually recruiting species to this new grassland.