Listen to Britain’s dawn chorus of 1976: the dramatic loss of birdsong in 50 years - @theguardian.com recreates audio landscape of past filled by loud morning symphony before 73m wild birds were lost www.theguardian.com/environment/...

We all know that Universities are run on good will and coffee…. and this week all we got left is coffee. 🔥 ☕️

“The creative arts are so important in the south-west. These cuts are really ill thought out and they threaten the very things that make me proud of Exeter. Please think again. This is a terrible mistake.” [Geography and Engineering also on the chopping block!] www.theguardian.com/education/20...

'The proposed industrial action is over plans to cut 200 jobs as the Brighton facility attempts to save £35m annually. It comes after more than 600 staff were put at risk of redundancy across academic, technical and professional services departments.'

Comparing the UK heatwaves of June 1976 and June 2026... Daytime maximum & night minimum temperatures were much hotter in 2026. Details: maxima over 21st-30th June in both years. Uses provisional 2026 HadUK-Grid data from Met Office NCIC. Note the difference scale is larger for night minimums.

🚨Great opportunity to get involved with an IODP3 expedition to the North Sea in 2027! We’re especially looking for folks who do: -glacial sedimentology -macrofossils (esp molluscs) -OSL Those from 🇬🇧 🇫🇷 🇩🇪 🇳🇴 are particularly welcome to apply. Great opportunity! ⚒️🌍🧪 iodp3.org/special-call...

📣 Applications are open for Science Communicators to join IODP³ Expedition 507! Work alongside an international research team and help bring cutting-edge climate and geoscience to wider audiences. 📅 Apply by 21 August 2026 iodp3.org/call-for-par...

2,700 letters sent last month warning staff that they are at risk of redundancy, with Nottingham senior management's goal to shed 608 academic posts, following the 350 professional services staff lost last year. 1/3

Hey Bluesky crowd! You also should be signing our petition opposing the announced redundancies at the University of Exeter. 📢 We're 17k and growing! Redundancies ARE NOT necessary and we must #DefendExeterUni 🩷 c.org/RFqMvrKb6z

Extinction Rebellion have stormed the stage in protest at the sponsorship from Howden group (who underwrite fossil fuel developments). And outside is a growing group protesting the compulsory redundancies (in areas such as environmental sciences and renewable engineering of all subjects!!)

This working week has been awful, so let’s all enjoy these wonderful pollinators swarming the wild carrot patch at my allotment for #wildflowerhour

'What is perhaps remarkable about the Exeter cuts is that they are targeted at some of the university’s most successful departments, many of which turn over a profit even after they have made enormous and increasing contributions to the central university budget.' Read, rage and weep.

That’s a precipitous drop!! 😱

That's great, although 17 academics in the Institute have this week been put at risk of redundancy, along with several others from environment facing depts. I do hope we can continue to contribute to Exeter's great track record on sustainability in the future.

AI is bad for women workers...in more ways than you think. aubreyhirsch.substack.com/p/why-ai-is-...

As you may know, the JOIDES Resolution is on its final transit to a shipbreaking yard in Turkey. Though expected, this news is difficult to hear. As we feel this loss, we want to hear from you: What is your favorite story from the JR? 📷 Phil Christie / Sea1 (left) 📷 Adam Bogus / IODP (right)

UK Higher Education is a slow motion disaster movie. And no one is coming to save us (or our students) from the decimation. We will look back on this period of destruction in the same way we look back at the Brexit vote. Oooops! I’m so done with this sector 😡 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Feeling grateful for living in coastal cornwall during these ever more intense heatwaves. This one seems like an absolute monster. >30C for huge swathes of the country and 39C in London?? That’s unimaginably hot, especially in a country which doesn’t really do air conditioning. 😬

A cracking sunny solstice for #wildflowerhour ☀️☀️☀️ Been snuffling around various Cornish heaths and moors this weekend looking at birds and plants.

Next week is London Climate Action Week…

⚒️ Article: The burial of terrestrially-derived organic carbon in coastal marine sediments greatly increased during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum @climategordon.bsky.social @sotonoceanearth.bsky.social @unisouthampton.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

At the end of the term I asked my college creative wriing students to submit anonymous thoughts on AI. No real surprises: Mood ranges from resignation to despair, capitulation from embittered erosion of standards to total, feelings of betrayal from deep to furious. 1/

Yowser. 'Edinburgh’s response goes even further. Any staff member not partaking in the boycott but who refuses to take on extra marking will have their pay deducted by 100 per cent.' Being financially punished for other people’s strike action?! Draconian.

Happy Pigeon Appreciation Day to all who celebrate. Marvellous birds. Smart, beautiful, adaptable. And always in the mood for love. 🐦

TODAY! I am fully aware of how absurd a <24h deadline is but trust me there’s a good reason. if you’re interested in this postdoc, send me your CV immediately.🧪⚒️

Two pieces from me this week you may have missed: (1) why no-one cares about Britain's university crisis. The only answer you get is 'yeah but apprenticeships' - not realising just how critical unis are to their provision. But what can one even say any more. 🤷‍♂️ www.arguably.uk/p/the-quiet-...

It’s been a loooong week (including 5 exam boards 🥴) with lots of computer and office time. But today I spent 2.5 hours showing year 5/6 kids cool fossils 🐚 for an outreach event, and then stopped to admire the gorgeous wildflower banks at campus on the way home. Happy weekend folks 😀

Good news! Ministers have finally given green light to new #NaturalHistory GCSE. We’ve campaigned so long for this! Big hats off to tireless advocate Mary Colwell 🙌 Now our young people will have a chance to get to know & love the natural world, to feel awe & wonder, & gain skills to protect it 🌷🌳🦡

Researchers have used Victorian-era archives and modern seabed data to produce the first long-term estimates of carbon disturbance from port dredging and aggregate extraction across the Northwest European shelf. oceanographicmagazine.com/news/what-is...

This is who you’re profiteering if you are still using X 👇🏽

16 plants to feed birds naturally and other tips to grow your garden's bird population www.wildway.info/p/15-plants-...

Awwwww yeah it’s baby herring gull time in our local roof-top colony 🥰 Look at those little bundles of floof 😍

“Slow the flow, get the habitat right and the species will come." An inspiring story of action and restoration when so much river news from the UK is grim. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Full-time or part-time Research Technician in Micropalaeontology available in my lab @bridgetwade.bsky.social @es-ucl.bsky.social as part of the NERC TONIC Large Grant. Closing date: 18th June 2026. More details: www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/... #technician #micropalaeontology #plankton #NERC

Our new paper on the challenges of marine CO₂ removal has a pretty figure. Please admire it. 🌊🧪

More sense from @thedailymash.bsky.social than from quite a few people in parliament this morning. www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/twa...

Q: How do you get "growth" without innovation, and how do you get innovation without funding public research? A: You don't. The UK has the worst public funding for uni + skills in the OECD, pay for starting lecturers down 25% since 2010, and that's why we are losing to countries abroad.

This! “A child offloading a task they've never learned to perform is not making a choice. They are skipping a developmental step that was never developed... The foreclosure may be permanent—and because they have no independent baseline, they cannot recognize what they're losing.”

Further evidence the net zero economy is one of the few parts of the economy that is booming. Truly insane that now is the time politicians start attacking one of the only sources of growth for UK businesses. www.businessgreen.com/news/4530440...

Didn’t have to look too far to bag the #orchidchallenge for #wildflowerhour. The grounds team on our @exeter.ac.uk / Falmouth Uni Penryn Campus do a fabulous job of managing it for wildflowers and nature. Loads of purple orchids this year in the margins near the car park. Southern marsh orchid?

Good god! 🥵

Academic May: Marking marking marking marking marking marking marking marking marking marking 😓 - My god what a beautiful world and aren’t the wildflowers amazing and whoa is that a red kite overhead?? 😍 Marking marking marking marking marking marking marking marking marking marking 😓

My self-sown foxgloves are putting on a great show in honour of #wildflowerhour. I worried in the winter that I’d left too many in the flower bed and that they’d take over… worries dispelled this week! 😍

A bright May evening- perfect for sitting in the garden and watching the swifts go screaming by. 😍 I love to think that just last month these guys were tearing up the skies over central Africa.

There's no question that Labour are losing more voters to their liberal-left flank (to the Greens and Lib Dems) than to Reform.

Would you like 1 minute 20 seconds of peaceful allotment evening vibes? If so, please enjoy! (*Bonus Green Woodpecker cameo included at no extra charge*)

The Division of Earth Sciences postdoc fellowship solicitation "has been archived and will not have a competition this fall,” an NSF spokesperson confirmed to Eos. eos.org/research-and...

It's still a shock every time I look at what used to be one of the standard US environmental data services and see that the live data just isn't being updated any more due to funding cuts. It hurts all of us.

For those of you concerned about university solvency, there is actually a lot of good work out there. What about this from m'learned colleague at Brunel on the financial health of every single uni? I count 40 universities rated 'Red' on the Critical List. policycommons.net/artifacts/48...

If anyone in government has a few minutes to run the country in between plotting leadership challenges, could they please cast their eye over the devastation of Higher Education in the UK. www.theguardian.com/education/20...