9.6 million NEW Merlin users in 2025 is a phenomenonal statistic #Ornithology 🪶 #UKBirding ebird.org/news/2025-ye...

Don't think I've seen this in previous years - an annual round up of #archaeology on the BBC website! Good to see ' #treasure ' not being centre stage for once. ...also interesting to note that cash value is only mentioned in relation to the #detecting finds. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

For anyone girding their loins for political arguments tomorrow, I recommend a moderator’s response to an @askhistorians.bsky.social post from a couple of years ago; it includes a passage about bad-faith arguments from a Sartre essay that knocked me off my feet the first time I read it.

props to this christmas lad I’ve just spotted on @flightradar24.com

SCROOGE: you there! what day is today? BOY: today? it's Christmas Day SCROOGE: the spirits did it all in one night! BOY: NINETEEN SEVENTY THREE [Life on Mars plays, a Ford Cortina suddenly crashes into Scrooge's front room] GENE HUNT: OI, DI Scrooge, get in, we've got a nonce in Didsbury to bust

Merry Christmas everyone, especially my #Playschool Babies. Be kind, considerate and compassionate as the festive season continues. Spread joy everywhere you go and remember the best gift you can give is unconditional love ❤️🎄❤️

Ski Holidays (2015) Art Print: www.inprnt.com/gallery/ryot...

@bouphe.bsky.social merry Christmas!

Worth 5 minutes of anyone's time to read about Ronnie. Consider having a tissue handy in case something should happen to get in your eye 🥹

Heads up to artists still using Twitter- Twitter is now adding an "Edit image" button under all images posted on the site that allows everyone to feed it into genAI and modify it as they wish with a prompt

You can all go home. It's all over early. #DuvetKnowItsChristmas has surely been won already.

Dear Santa: All I want for Christmas is a Snowy Owl irruption...🦉🪶

Indeed. You can tell them apart from the hen harrier as the latter is usually cooped up in a barn

I know a man in Aberdare; his eyes are blue as sky. He rides along on Siôn Corn's train - they call him Platfform Dai.

you can follow the progress of Santa's train on Real Time Trains, including a stop at Butterwell Opencast (between Ashington and Morpeth) to take on coal www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-n...

This here, a proud and upsetting member of His Majesty's Royal Navy, is Pollyanna the reindeer. And for the avoidance of doubt, she's the one on the right of the photograph.

Government response to JNCC’s advice following the seventh quinquennial review of species protections under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 "we will not be implementing the proposed amendments to the Act as set out in JNCC’s advice" www.gov.uk/government/p...

Happy holidays! Pigeons make milk, and I hope this fact fills you with joy and concern during this festive time of year

More anti-renewables astroturfing from the BBC, quoting exactly three (3) villagers opposed to a solar farm, and zero data.

I see there’s a post about microplastics going around with a photo of drinking straws, so here is my semi-regular reminder that the 3 biggest sources of microplastics are tires (45%), synthetic clothing particles (35%) and paint (~10%). Lay article attached:

Young Peregrine euthanised after suffering gunshot injuries in Leicestershire. Sad news from @leicsperegrines.bsky.social who are working hard to encourage public engagement. Please give them a follow. #RaptorResearch #WildlifeCrime raptorpersecutionuk.org/2025/12/24/p...

Yesss finally got 100% Clues by Sam - Dec 23rd 2025 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 05:04 #cluesbysam cluesbysam.com

Year 1 data on congestion pricing in Manhattan… * Vehicle traffic: -11% * Foot traffic: +3.4% * Storefront vacancy: -0.9% * Pollution: -22% * Revenue for mass transit: $548M So YES this has been a huge success.

Remains found by a farmer in a long forgotten chamber on the Isle of Bute, Scotland are the remains of 2 people from the Bronze Age. 👇 BBC News - Remains found by island farmer are two people from Bronze Age www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Day twenty-three of #ArtAdventCalendar Here is a coloured pencil drawing of a mountain hare in the snow.

Tomorrow evening it’ll be my annual duty to vaguely shepherd the activity on the #duvetknowitschristmas hashtag and urge people to give small sums to charity. 7.30pm? Something like that?

RSPB seasonal positions @rspbscience.bsky.social are live & we are ready for applications! 🌱🪶🌊⛰️🐣 Huge variety of posts available for 2026: seabirds, veg surveys, visitor questionnaires, upland monitoring, wader chick tracking... all listed on the attachments via the link 👇 Deadline 11th Jan 2026 📆

Different species are hiding in our second Christmas quiz! Let us know who they are in the comments. Answers and our final quiz tomorrow! Yesterday's answers are: A - Fulmar, B - Razorbill, C - Cormorant, D - Common Gull #birds #seabirds @btobirds.bsky.social @jncc.bsky.social @rspb.bsky.social

Santa told us that people that don’t add alt text are getting coal in their stocking this year.

Us, watching the grey seal live stream on YouTube right now... Things have certainly quietened down over at Blakeney Point after another busy pupping season, but we'll still be keeping the camera live for a while yet. Join us, and let us know what you spot here: buff.ly/OVC00M9

Not now, haunted Victorian shoes

I've stuck randomly generated conspiracies onto Matt from the Telegraph's cartoons to create "Tinfoil Matt" (Not AI, me writing templates, the good old fashioned way to do these things with a strong degree of authorship.) Follow @tinfoil-matt.bsky.social NOW.

Says a lot about a country when the highest paid woman in the land has the sole job of promoting gambling. Shame the doctors, nurses and counsellors who gave to pick up the pieces of the lives shattered by this industry aren’t paid as much. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

This is how I would end the news if I was reading the news.

Well, happy anniversary to one of the finest of festive exchanges

"We backed up Spotify (metadata and music files). It’s distributed in bulk torrents (~300TB), grouped by popularity." annas-archive.li/blog/backing...

#RIP Chris Rea I bought his house 1991 on garage wall is happy Christmas message his daughters sprayed it's still there Chris is driving home For Christmas now singing for our nearest & dearest Grateful for his wonderful gravely voice.  God bless you Chris #RIP

Birdwatching with a camera in St Andrews? A colour-ringed Oystercatcher on West Sands WW-W(KC) breeds on the ninth green of an Iceland #Golf Course. Members of club would love a photo of her - especially on the Old Course. More about project: wadertales.wordpress.com/2021/02/02/o... #BirdingScotland

If looking for geese in east Norfolk over the holiday period, please avoid flushing them. Watch from vehicles if possible. If not, avoid slamming car doors, clanking tripods & making noise. You get prolonged views, the geese aren’t disturbed & other birders aren’t cheesed off. 👍 #norfolkbirding

I certainly didn't expect to see a VHS down there. Bummer. @schmidtocean.bsky.social dive 884 #argentiniandeepseeps #MarineLife #CONICET

Archivists/librarians please share the coolest thing in your collections that will never be digitized.

#AvianHybrids cns.utexas.edu/news/researc...

oooooooh bloody HELL www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

📣Now Available📣 The Bamburgh Bowl Hole Anglian-period Cemetery is the full publication of the sixth- to eighth-century burials excavated between 1999 and 2007. It integrates archaeological, osteological and isotopic data into a comprehensive account of the cemetery. 🏺 @brparchaeology.bsky.social

Yes. The fascist politicians and billionaires who are currently ruining the country are massively mediocre thinkers and monumentally uncreative chumps. They have the advantage of a total lack of morals and a willingness to commit any crime imaginable. But they're losers and they will lose.

Reminder: resolutions can be fun! You can resolve to try a new cheese every week, eat all the weird fruits you’ve been curious about at the grocery store, or commit to watching 12 different classic films. Why make crappy resolutions when you can make happy ones

Highly amused by the stories of companies using agentic AI chatbots to run their internal company stores, only for their employees to immediately Bugs Bunny the chatbot into giving them free stuff www.aiweirdness.com/when-a-chatb...

The actor Michael Sheen used all his money to start a fake debt collecting business, buy 900 people in Wales's debt, and excused it. If Musk bought ALL $194 billion in medical debt in the U.S. and excused it in the same way, he'd still be the world's riches man by hundreds of billions of dollars.