Can a goldcrest’s crown be orange? I very definitely saw orange as it turned to look at me. But 4yo was having a wee at the back of a car park, so wasn’t able to get a better look.

Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵 Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...

"Bird was a bit of a hoarder!" said the exterminator.

Apparently, the collective noun for Parids is 'troupe' and I will henceforth insist on this terminology in all my peer reviews.

Gang gang cockatoo science is sometimes quite undignified 🥲

TIL

Jelly is really quite weird: it doesn't set at room temperature, yet once set it won't melt at room temperature.

November 2025 Globally,according to NASA, had a temperature anomaly of +0.61C vs 1991/2020 norm and was the 3rd warmest November on record behind 2023 and 2024. 2025 is still slightly ahead of 2023 but it's expected to end tied with 2023 as the 2nd hottest year behind 2024.

I'm not knowledgeable enough to have an 'office list'. But if I did, I'd have just added blackcap.

This is the moment we realised what we were looking at. During @nemo-tools.bsky.social ROV surveys to map gorgonian & coralligenous habitats, the seafloor suddenly turned into a landscape of circular nests, each guarded by a male. We weren’t searching for spawning grounds – we dropped onto one.

Urgh, I was over the moon with my close encounter with goldcrests. And then this.

We're excited to announce the finalists of the #RSPPhotoComp 2025! 🎉 Starting with #microimaging and overall winner, 'Mesmerizing spider threads' by Dr Martin Ramirez, capturing two exceptional silk threads of the Australian net-caster spider (sample obtained by Dr Jonas Wolff @evoimec.bsky.social).

Has gene flow been neglected as a key part of the evolutionary responses to selection?

Disorienting to be at work when an Ashes test is in play in East coast Australia.

The amazing Helicopter Damselfly Mecistogaster amalia. This large damselfly has a 14 centimetre wingspan and flies slowly around the forest plucking spiders from their webs. One of the highlights of a visit to Onofre Cunha REGUA in the Atlantic Forest, Brazil last week

This seems staggeringly sensible. In what post-graduation circumstances would someone be expected to write a balanced, well-researched appraisal in, e.g., an hour?

Fabulous view of Jupiter this morning. Just through binoculars you can see several moons (including Europa and Io to the left, Ganymede to the right).

Remember Internet cafes? Like the dinosaurs, they ruled the world and then were wiped out.

This week’s EGI seminar will be given by @peterkorsten.bsky.social from Aberystwyth on the ecology of behavioural variation in the wild at 3.30pm Friday 5 Dec - LT1 in @biology.ox.ac.uk. All welcome & live-streamed: see joining details below.

What a depressing moniker. "Hello", said Fox. "I don't think we've met. Who are you?" "I'm edible dormouse." link.springer.com/article/10.1...

i hope this email finds you well

Bird place-name of the day 116: ULEHAMS FARM (Essex). OE ule + ham. ‘Owl-haunted farm/estate’. #birdsandplace #placenames #naturewriting

"A voluntary agreement to begin discussions on a roadmap to an eventual phase-out of fossil fuels." Have you ever read such an absurd sentence?

A lot has happened since our first announcement of #ExE2026, an evolutionary ecology conference hosted by @uniexecec.bsky.social in #Cornwall from June 29 to July 3 2026. Have a look at our new website to see our confirmed plenary speakers, the mid-conference excursions, and more. 👉 evoxeco.uk 👈

They're also responsible for one of the best emails I've ever received, when the college office sent out a plea for sightings of Professor Biscuit while conveniently forgetting to mention that he was a cat...(I won't comment on how often a similar email might have gone out about human Professors...)

And again today. That’s the third time in succession at the same site.

Today's speaker on ectoparasite biology: "Attachment is a big commitment for a tick."

Do people find Merlin tends to confuse the chatter of goldcrests with firecrests? Could the two co-occur?

Why doesn't the "reply all" button have a virtual safety cap fitted? It would free up so much academic time.

An epilogue.

It takes an exceptionally gifted bird to maintain such a pleasing clutch arrangement. "Nesthetics" would be a great topic for a coffee table book.

I was under the false impression the good people of Britain had backed a government that was to be lead by a human rights lawyer. I must have mistranslated “human rights” from the original English.

We're now starting to get reports of dead Whooper Swans with rings. If you find a dead bird & feel comfortable doing so - check for rings using the below @btobirds.bsky.social advice 👇🏻 Collecting information on ringed birds helps better understand the impact on different age groups.

periodic reminder of the existence of Atkinson Hyperlegible, a free font available from the Braille Institute designed to improve readability for people with low vision I use it in talks because it's pretty and also because, as an audience member, I am perpetually squinting at people's slides

Recently visited the Glass Flowers at Harvard, a collection of 4,300 extraordinarily realistic glass models of plants crafted by the Blaschkas, a father and son team of sculptors That’s right, these are all made primarily of GLASS — a fact difficult to accept given how accurate & lifelike they are

I'm appalled to discover that the French refer to dachsunds as “Texels” and not “chien saucisse”.

Every ad now

How much carbon budget do we have left if we want to stay below 1.5˚C? Just 2 more years at current rates. It is essentially impossible to avoid global temperature rise exceeding 1.5˚C. climatelabbook.substack.com/p/the-shrink...

If I could just have a firecrest pop by, we'd unarguably have moved beyond day-my-eldest-child-was-born territory.

Watching goldcrests through my office window! A new candidate for best day of my life.

NO WAYYYY! 🤯🤯🤯 Is this the COOLEST stick insect ever?? 💚 This mossy girl (Taraxippus sp.) from Peru was the most incredible phasmid I have ever seen, I could not get over how perfectly camouflaged it was on the mossy trees! 🌳 So in awe of our natural world! 🌿

Still think this was one of the best power moves of all time www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

This came up as a memory on my phone just now. 👌 If we get a real cold snap this winter, and i get roadkill. I'm gonna try again. #goldeneagles

oh yeah ok this is super cool not only did they find a gynandromorph spider, it also turned out to be a new species! 🤯🧪🕷️

Griffon Vultures crossing The #Straits yesterday- pure migratory magic! ….or youth dispersal magic 😉 1,687 Griffon Vultures crossed over our heads!

"An ecologist who shot to fame after discovering that spiders have human-like personalities" Umm...think it was a little while later that we all heard of Pruitt. And "infamy" is probably a more appropriate noun.

a century of glaciers melting 🧪🌐

😞

It is terrifying that Farage’s planned imitation of such a lawless government is so broadly appealing in the UK.

arXiv will no longer accept review articles and position papers unless they have been accepted at a journal or a conference and complete successful peer review. This is due to being overwhelmed by a hundreds of AI generated papers a month. Yet another open submission process killed by LLMs.