Look forward to this featuring in the next ‘What animals can teach us’ books

For your Monday, here's one of the JWST Deep Field images. This is a portion of the sky about one-fifth the size of a full Moon. And it contains THOUSANDS of galaxies—some of which extend back to when the Universe was a couple of billion years old. The redder a galaxy, the farther away it is.

Going through the first batch of sounds collected last week by the Biophones ... both were located on mires on N Dartmoor, and this is a lovely example of what these places sound like at first light at the moment - the spectrogram shows a grasshopper warbler "reeling" and a "drumming" snipe.

Tawny owls during daytime are okay, though.

Swallows are chattering, swifts screaming in the sky, a red kite flew over the house this morning and the village has acquired a cuckoo this year. Apart from the tawny owls keeping me awake, it is a wonderful time of year.

I still love the theory a Year 6 child proposed to me that David Attenborough is actually God and he got fed up with people not noticing the amazing things he'd created, so he made documentaries to show off.

What is Sir David explaining here

Nothing to see here, just an average size Kingdom of Kent oak tree, and an average size citizen 🫡🌳

Happy 100th Birthday to David Attenborough. They say never meet your heroes. He was as awesome as you'd imagine. Made everyone feel special the day he came to Wytham Woods to film the birds and their eggs.

There's a brilliant BBC radio recording (1956) of her discussing scientific discovery with Attenborough in the BBC sound archives. She had £10 for that first expedition, was rejected by the Royal Veterinary College because she was female, and had to borrow a male colleague's microscope../2

A red-capped robin at the Bellbird camping ground. Gluepot Reserve, South Australia.

If pedantry was a competitive discipline, The Guardian’s sports editor would surely be a household name.

Another good post-92 deciding that its students don’t deserve humanities.

”Sure facts, speculations, and open questions about X” would make for a great article type at a journal.

Australian Pink Robin.💜

Tough marker

When I began my editing career, I often changed “utilize” to “use.” For the past eight years or so, I’ve been changing “leverage” to “use.” Now I’m changing “use case” to the noun “use.” What do you people have against “use” in its various forms? It’s a perfectly fine word.

Orange-bellied Parrot is a small (~45 g) parrot endemic to southeastern Australia. Unusually for a parrot, this species is an obligate migrant, breeding in remote southwestern Tasmania and spending the nonbreeding season on the coast of the Australian mainland. birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/...

I have a nagging feeling that the BBC’s subtitles aren’t fully conveying the original Swedish.

Anyone know the history behind this infamous phrase? Who was the first to use it? How did it catch on??

You are interested in evolutionary ecology and quantitative genetics. You enjoy fieldwork and birds. Join our laboratory and our international team. csee-scee.ca/job/fully-fu...

Another day’s serving of joy.

I had a wonderful experience returning to great tit research (paridology?) for >3 years, rediscovering the blissful contentment of my PhD 15 years earlier. I got to know Lack, Kluyver and their charming friendship, and hopefully will add to the literature they started.

£450, limited-mileage running shoes tested by a back-of-the-field Parkrunner. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Black-Throated Loon widespread across Eurasia, with a smaller population in North America (Alaska) 📷: Tom Nickels #birds

A female red-capped robin. Gluepot Reserve, South Australia.

In our new paper, published yesterday, we use the long-term data set of Wytham Woods to show that great tits have maintained stable temperature at breeding despite the almost 2ºC increase in Spring temperature. w. E. Cole, C. Regan & @sheldonbirds.bsky.social Link -> www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

100 Greatest Bird Names, Day 1: #100 to #91 🧵 #100: Chad Firefinch This is no Virginia Rail. Cockiest bird in Central Africa. Even though it's #100, the selection process was still incredibly competitive. This bird is still in the top 1% of all bird names.

A benevolent embedded-superintelligence would announce that henceforth RStudio will only estimate statistical relationships upon receipt of a reasoned hypothesis.

Oh Good God. I was prompted to download the newest version of RStudio and it has AI. "Ask it to explore patterns". Surely, any form of intelligence—organic or silicon—can see that pattern mining is not something ecology is short of.

Dark times. We can but hope that history’s conclusion on this is that it was a catastrophic misjudgement by their leaderships that ultimately led to the institutions’ collapse. And that this comes quickly.

In Cornwall, you’re never more than ten feet away from a firecrest.

I was so absorbed thoughts about avian life history evolution that I drove past my destination without noticing.

I think this is a cool initiative by BES. But it's also a sign of what a huge distance we still have to travel if non-confirmatory results command a dedicated special issue. They shouldn't be "special". besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/journal/...

Is the opening sentence to this new PNAS article true? What happened to nuptial gifts? Access to guarded resources (e.g., territories)? www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

“No! She’s not a doctor! She’s a mummy!” Our toddler is unexpectedly conservative.

Is this the belated end of absurd “Job” posts where the lucky appointee works unpaid for 6-12 months in return for “experience”?

"...Skynet was trained on an extensive archive of pirated humanities articles—hence its misanthropy, overuse of the em dash, and proclivity for always already predictively adding “already” after “always.”"

Lovely to have the skies filled with the dance and chatter of swallows.

The number of ‘bells’ an English Bluebell has reflects its age It is dependent on the increasing size of the bulb, root system & leaves capable of managing the weight, nutrients & water Individuals plants can live over 15 years. Established colonies can be a thousand years old

This Reform leaflet from three Gateshead candidates looks like a timelapse of the same person

Astonishing level of privilege to (a) travel by private plane for a round of golf, and (b) have it reported without criticism. www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/a...

Sat in our office, listening to a firecrest singing its heart out ☺️

Spotted at the River Bookshop: my chapbook on vocal learning in Savannah Sparrows. riverbookshop.com/products/sav... This chapbook is part of a series "Birders on Birds" with proceeds supporting the Pelee Island Bird Observatory. @peleeislandbird.bsky.social @riverbookshop.bsky.social

Join me & @olliepadget.bsky.social at @livuninews.bsky.social! #postdoc #seabird movement & navigation in response to environmental cues @ukri.org. Developing new loggers w/ micro-engineers & computer scientists @yorkuniversity.bsky.social. Job tinyurl.com/2zuzktv5 Press release tinyurl.com/2zuzktv5

Long-term ecological studies provide a narrative of biological change. Without them, it’s a struggle to overcome the shifting baseline, which is possibly the motive for eliminating them.

Oh no. NSF Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program shuttered. This one leaves me winded. A good story from 2025 by @seattletimes-rss.bsky.social offers insight into what we are losing: www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

This is so, so well-articulated.

This is incredible: Artemis II launch as viewed from a plane youtube.com/shorts/AP63-...