I was planning to go to Titchwell today, but my wife needed the car, trying to work out if it was better to miss todays Black-browed Albatross while warm at home, or maybe miss it at Titchwell if I had not been seawatching when it flew past.

New ditch methane paper out, via my ongoing collaboration with Zhifeng Yan's group at Tianjin University. We show agricultural ditches can affect regional CH4 budgets. agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

Farm viability, if soil characteristics, market access, area, capital/debt is equal then management variance is an important factor. projectblue.blob.core.windows.net/media/Defaul...

@moreorloess.bsky.social With a resistance to collectivisation and land expropriation from large estates small farm holdings stayed small until 1989 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

"Woodchat Shrikes spend only three full months on breeding grounds, limiting the window for habitat management. Since they spend most of the year in sub-Saharan Africa, threats in the Sahel—such as rising temperatures, unpredictable rainfall, and land degradation—are critical."

Fields, 1956 and today, in a small area of eastern France (Haut-Rhin, 35-40 km west of the Rhine and Basel, Switzerland). Names of towns change from French to German just east of this location. Historic air photo from IGN.

Incredible storm in General Villegas, Buenos Aires province earlier today. PS I’m not turning into a weather channel, but some things are incredible.

Why microplastics should be routinely sampled by limnologists. No environmental field survey that has searched for microplastics has yet failed to detect their presence. They are omnipresent in the water column, in the sediments, and in aquatic food webs. Read our review paper: t.co/E6BCVtgVbi

Strip cultivation in 1956

Break down in the rule of law in the UK, we watched Tories and their pals loot the state during a pandemic which wrecked so many lives, just part of the corruption which inevitably results in widespread crime which an indifferent state ignores.

It remains largely unknown whether epigenetic mosaicism arising in long-lived plants can have evolutionary relevance.We show in this new preprint that somatic epigenetic mosaics within Pistacia terebinthus trees leave a signature in DNA of the pollen grains produced www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

An 1170 document from the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds records a sale by the knight Gilbert fitz Ralph to the prior of Bury. The item for purchase was Aluric son of Stannard the fuller, “with all the progeny that has descended from him or will descend from him.”

A short 🧵: one astounding thing I learned while researching TIGERS BETWEEN EMPIRES was the existence of the Willow Palisade, a 700-km wall made of interlocking trees, an extension of the Great Wall planted in NE China in the 17th century. This map shows approx. Amur tiger range in 1850. 1/9

The danger is in thinking the physical element of soil is without complexity, the mineralogy of soils, clays perhaps especially is complex, just as much as organic material is and the biotic community. www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Check out our new paper in @royalsociety.org testing mechanisms behind elevational range restriction in tropical montane songbirds! ⛰️🦜🌳 Backstory: when i first visited Central America in the early 2010's i was struck with elevational ranges of birds.. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing: a 🧵 1/n Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820 Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/... Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

The Drain of Scientific Publishing details very clearly how for-profit publishers making >30% profit margins have corrupted any solution the research community has attempted. Let's cut ourselves free. Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820 Strain: bit.ly/StrainQSS Oligopoly: bit.ly/OligSciPub 12/12

A project to restore ancient forests in the Scottish Highlands is significantly boosting moth biodiversity, a Butterfly Conservation study has found. 🌳 Read the full story 👉 buff.ly/AyKPh6e 📷: Patrick Cook, Sarah Wanless #MothsMatter #TeamMoth

I'm particularly proud of the section on psychological life-history research tradition, where we trace its history not to evolutionary biology and ecology and their decades of theory and modeling, but to the baseless abberation initiated by JP Rushton. This distinction is not widely known enough. 8/

November 12, 2019: A formal complaint is lodged about stolen papyri fragments at Oxford. One of the wildest heist tales ever was about to unfold. www.theguardian.com/news/2020/ja...

Common law had no solution but equity did, how trusts solved a crusaders problem and gave lawyers work while bedevilling and at times protecting members of families with property. www.openuniversitylawsociety.co.uk/post/the-epi...

For #HillfortsWednesday the early #medieval hillfort and settlement of Grzybowo, Poland. The first ruling dynasty of Poland, the Piasts, used hillfort strongholds to expand their influence across Poland and they were likely places of thriving trade. 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy... 🏺 #Archaeology

Our new paper in Ecology Letters, led by Jan Divíšek, shows that non-invasive alien plant species that successfully establish within local plant communities tend to resemble the resident native species. In contrast, invasive alien species usually differ from native plants. doi.org/10.1111/ele....

Here's an update about #raccoondogs in #Finland! Extensive #hunting has made a dent in the number of raccoon dogs and this is reflected in reduced nest predation of #waterfowl. Also! Raccoon dogs in the north move longer distances than those in the south, unhindered by barriers like roads. (1/2)

Apple snails are highly invasive, and our new study suggests they have the potential to spread inside birds @ebdonana.bsky.social aquaticinvasions.arphahub.com/article/1750...

Great piece by Zadie Smith. When the right talks about classics or "Western" culture, these works are only important to the extent that it demonstrates their superiority, they have no interest in art in and of itself beyond that www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Pair of charmingly grumpy owls out on skates for winter fun. Have even brought along a snack! By Adriaen van de Venne, who died (alas!) on this day 1662.

British works rarely are overtly geobiological, A. G. Tansley, Types of British Vegetation (1911) and The British Islands and their Vegetation (1939) recognised geology and landform.

To concentrate on geological source of soil material was an obvious first step, agriculture talks of light and heavy soils, of warm and cold soils, a light and warm soil is free draining, a sand or chalk soil, a heavy and cold soil is not free draining, may require drainage, a clay soil.

How to not be swamped by your microclimate data? The rise of microclimate data may have opened Pandora’s box. Gone are the days of simple bioclimatic variables — now heads spin trying to summarize these timeseries. A much-needed paper by @krystofchytry.bsky.social: 🔗 the3dlab.org/2025/11/11/h...

This paper was the most frustrating journey I've ever gone through... Nevertheless, after nearly two years, the paper is finally published.

Geobotany for me an important way of looking at plants, but what does it mean? Two meanings both published in the same year, "Geo-Botanical Researches into the Chernozem" (an English translation of the Russian title), published 1866 by Franz Joseph Ruprecht,

Do you work (/want to work) with caterpillars? Or sensory systems? Or BOTH?! Well good golly do we have the paper for you! We explain the senses that caterpillars have, what they use them for, and how anthropogenic sensory pollution might be messing it all up 🐛 doi.org/10.1007/s003...

The importance of Middlewick Ranges in Essex youtu.be/Ku-eD0J42as?...

Very happy to see the last and my favourite article of the PhD out in @funecology.bsky.social! We show how an invasive moth can alter plant-frugivore interactions in the Mediterranean dwarf palm🦋🏝️🍒🐐 @imedea.bsky.social @annatraveset.bsky.social besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

New study on factors influencing collisions of Red Kite Milvus milvus with wind turbines: findings suggest that turbines with rotor diameters <90m and clearances > 60m may pose a lower relative threat to Red Kites. Read more here: doi.org/10.1016/j.bi...

🌸Check the newly published article ‘Contrasting effects of pollinators on the pollination success of floral morphs of a distylous bowl-shaped flower’ in @annbot.bsky.social by @j-valverde.bsky.social 🧵(1/10) 👉 doi.org/qc2r @ebdonana.bsky.social #PlantScience #PollinationBiology #AoBpapers

Bachman's Warbler was discovered by the Reverend John Bachman in 1832 on the Edisto River a few miles north of Jacksonborough, South Carolina. In 1833 John J. Audubon painted and named the species after his friend Bachman. The photograph from 1958 is one of the last observations before extinction.

While the Mersey Barrage is a risk to birds, not so much for Ruddy Shelducks unless things have change more than I imagine.

Okay, here are some first reflections on Watson. Watson's life is a tragedy, really of Shakespearean proportions. He did not, as most bios will tell you, do one great thing when he was young and then collect laurels for it for the next 60 years. His career arc was unlike any in science.

Watson and Crick elucidated the structure of DNA. Stop saying that they discovered DNA! This was done by another guy you probably haven't heard of! And therein lies a story. academic.oup.com/genetics/art...

Might be as close to the reality as any account gets. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The continuing mismeasure of people makes it to PNAS - and poorly applied genomics will not fix the confounding of family wealth, other environmental variables and genetics. A zombie idea likely popular with far-right types. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Where are they now? More than 10 years on from the initial revelation, it still blows my mind that Shetland’s phalaropes winter in the Pacific (map from Brooke’s ‘Far From Land’). Yet they are short-distance migrants compared with Arctic Terns… #BirdingScotland

Evolution of molecular communication in the permanent Azolla symbiosis #TansleyInsight by Büyüktaş et al. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #plantscience

If you ever visit Holme next the Sea and look at the 'grazing marsh' a polder (embanked and drained saltmarsh created in 1860) these are the owners Robinson

Seahenge 2 image taken in 2025, near the site of excavated Seahenge 1.

Document which will help with understanding condition assessments. publications.naturalengland.org.uk/publication/...