Happy 100th birthday to 'our David' 🎂🥳🎉 “Universities, it seems to me, are the most important institution in our society bar none." Happy birthday Sir David Attenborough, Honorary Doctor of Science, 2011 🎂🥳🎉 https://ow.ly/YwKc50YWu6v #EverToExcel

🪶 How does recreational activity affect wildlife? New article led by Amber Cowans links habitat selection theory with a social-ecological systems perspective to show how recreationists and wildlife influence one another #RecreationEcology 📖 Read the full paper here ➡️ buff.ly/IPnVJk3

Curious about what drives transoceanic vagrancy and what it might mean for birds? Our new paper discusses these questions in the context of Hurricane Lee and the remarkable influx of American landbirds recorded in the British Isles in September 2023. Take a look: tinyurl.com/388k3mcp

The new Hotspots Descriptions on eBird is going to be a really useful resource for birders visiting birding spots they’re not familiar with. Similar approach as Wikipedia, with community-based contributions of suggested text #birdingFife share.google/mDmINs0KNoGO...

Recently published in Austral Entomology: Louis Backstrom demonstrates how citizen science data from iNaturalist reveal substantial gaps and new insights in the distribution of Australian butterflies, including range changes across dozens of species.

Here's a great book about Australian #conservation. I was delighted to provide a quote for the cover. @justinehausheer.bsky.social takes readers into the lab and field to meet conservationists working to stop Australia's #extinction crisis, and the political inertia they're battling against.

Where to Watch Birds in Scotland launched on this day in 2019 With 1.75 million site views since then, our free app helps beginner & experienced birders alike discover the best places to see birds across Scotland. If you haven't downloaded it yet, you can do so here www.the-soc.org.uk/about-us/app

Emperor Penguin now Endangered!🐧 Our new IUCN Red List assessment reveals the shocking impact of climate change.🌍 Drastic declines and erratic changes in sea ice in Antarctica are projected to cause the Emperor Penguin population to halve by the 2080s.📉 Read more👉 www.birdlife.org/emperorpenguin

New paper out today in @austentsoc.bsky.social Austral Entomology! Analysing nearly 300,000 @inaturalist.bsky.social observations by 22,000 #citizenscience users reveals many new insights into where Australian butterflies occur. Open Access here: doi.org/10.1111/aen....

Two great postdoc opportunities with @eesaupe.bsky.social in Oxford on macroecology/extinction/conservation through a paleobiological lens

What does biodiversity look like in your own backyard? That's the question we explored when our team headed to visit the ever-iconic Martha Stewart to help document the wildlife living alongside her gardens. Catch the full segment on CBS Sunday Morning: tr.ee/hTkHNx0zxJ

Ptilotus senarius hadn’t been seen since the 1960s. People thought it was extinct — until nature-enthusiast and horticulturist Aaron Bean came across it and shared an observation to iNaturalist. There, community members helped confirm what once seemed impossible: this species had survived.

A horticulturalist putting bands on birds in a remote part of QLD saw an interesting plant. He uploaded photos to a #CitizenScience app, where a Queensland Herbarium botanist saw them and recognised a plant thought to be extinct: connectsci.au/news/news-pa...#CitizenScience @ausjbotany.bsky.social #AusJBotany

Thrilled to be part of this new study that aims to derive a meaningful classification of distinct and recognisable Australian terrestrial bird communities. Lead by @martinemaron.bsky.social and Hannah Fraser with many other colleagues check it out here. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

MAJOR NEWS! We just launched an awesome new tool! The illustrated Birds of the World Phylogeny Explorer lets users trace any bird’s lineage, compare species relationships, and explore major evolutionary milestones with a click of a button. SHARE and EXPLORE! birdsoftheworld.org/bow/news/phy...

The @theseabirdgroup.bsky.social 1992 conference was sponsored by shortbread and whiskey! We need more of this.

Great to attend #BES2025 in Edinburgh this week, and to have the opportunity to share some of my PhD work with conference attendees!

We churned through over 100 million radar samples to quantify the structure of migration through the airspaces across the United States: Just out in Ecology esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Richard Fuller, winner of the #AOC2025 Serventy Medal, talks about migratory birds in Australia. From shorebirds that use the East Asian – Australasian Flyway to surreptitious night-time migrant, the story of bird migration is far richer than most of us realise. www.fullerlab.org

So excited to shared this project lead with @fredericddb.bsky.social and many enthusiastic ecologists. We played as predators and prey and with quite simple rules and were able to reproduce phenomenon observed in nature. doi.org/10.1111/2041... @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social

Do you teach #rstats? Do your students complain about how lame and old-fashioned dplyr is? Don't worry: I have the solution for you: github.com/hadley/genzp.... genzplyr is dplyr, but bussin fr fr no cap.

Featuring a Desertas petrel that stunned scientists by chasing a tropical storm (see their incredible chase mapped here!), tiny nightingales that cross the Sahara twice a year, and Bewick's swans that have changed their stopovers and diet

The next International Statistical Ecology Conference (ISEC) will take place on January 8-15, 2027, in Mérida, México. Calls for workshop and roundtable proposals now open, deadline Nov 15, 2025 (anywhere on earth). Visit statisticalecology.org for more information. 🧪 Please share widely 📈🦋🐾

Large citizen science datasets are powerful tools for biodiversity science, but they may have biases. Nice new paper from @louisbackstrom.bsky.social et al. showing that for eBird and Birdtrack lists there is a tendency for rare species to be over-represented onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Brilliant trip to Barra and Colonsay (19th-23rd Sep) with @birdingscot.bsky.social, @louisbackstrom.bsky.social, and James Weeks. Some great birds over the course of the trip, with Stuart Beeby's Swainson's Thrush at Cuithir the undeniable highlight, and a lifer for all of us! 1/4 #BirdingScotland

Very pleased to share my first PhD paper, out now in @consbiog.bsky.social: Backstrom, L. J., Drake, R. L., Worthington, H., & Johnston, A. (2025). Detections of Rare Species Lead Citizen Scientists to Initiate Data Recording. Diversity and Distributions, 31(10), e70103. doi.org/10.1111/ddi.... ⤵️