Beginner's luck is a thing, and with a balmy autumn night I was quite excited for my 9th ever moth-trapping night. But Clifden Nonpareil was not on the bingo card! Also, Least Carpet, Pink-barred Sallow and Rosy Rustic. #TeamMoth #leptember #Moths @willjsmith.bsky.social

A very kind interpretation of a baby pigeon! Here are some wild Rock Dove chicks, who may not be winning beauty contests... 🫠 (nests visited for ongoing @uniofnottingham.bsky.social research in the Outer Hebrides, and for @btobirds.bsky.social @btoscotland.bsky.social #NestRecordScheme)

🥳New paper out in the Journal of #ornithology Assignment of wintering Barnacle Geese (Branta leucopsis) to breeding populations using genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphisms link.springer.com/article/10.1... A nice collaboration between Wageningen University and NIOO-KNAW. 🤝

We're looking for a new postdoc on our new BBSCR grant (Graham Taylor/Tim Guilford/Cait Newport). See link below! my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

#BirdStudy welcomes submissions on all aspects of #ornithology, eg. distribution/abundance patterns; movements/dispersal; habitat effects; census, marking & tracking, behaviour; conservation. Main focus Europe, Atlantic, Afro-Palearctic Flyway, N Africa, but useful papers considered from any region.

Comparing the feral city pigeon with its wild form, Early Career Fellow @willjsmith.bsky.social endeavors to reveal whether feral species are experiencing reverse-domestication or proceeding down a new evolutionary trajectory. media.leverhulme.ac.uk/feature/wsmith @uniofnottingham.bsky.social

A little write up @leverhulme.ac.uk summarising my research plans @uniofnottingham.bsky.social for the next few years: media.leverhulme.ac.uk/feature/wsmith. 🧬🐦🤓

Perceptions of #pigeons are not trivial. How we see them (either as companions or gross rats with wings) shapes the behaviour and #management policies that structure pigeon populations and the #pathogens they carry.

It's always exciting to get reports of the wild Rock Doves that @jezierskimt.bsky.social and I study in Uist. 'Green SI' is one of my favourites. It has been re-sighted 53 times since being ringed in 2022. It is a big fan of garden bird-feeders, and sees meadow-based foraging as too much effort.

A good 6 hours and 6 minutes left to apply! Don't be shy.

Expertly led by @claudiafontsere.bsky.social now published in Molecular Ecology! 🥳 Learn why from a genetic perspective whooping cranes should remain protected due to loss of genetic diversity and accumulation of inbreeding and load #popgen #consgen onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

How great was #EOU2025 in Bangor, Wales?! So delighted to have presented my Master’s thesis project on tracing the geographic origins of behavioural variation in Common Reed Warblers using genomic data. Huge thanks to @bou.org.uk and @dornitholges.bsky.social for helping make this possible!

Cities aren’t uniform. Neither is disease. 🦠🏙️ Psittacosis in #urban feral #pigeons shows fine-scale heterogeneity, even a few kilometres can make a big difference. City averages risk hiding the true #hotspots without dense spatial sampling #DiseaseEcology #UrbanEcology #EOU25

Our new study in Molecular Ecology doi.org/10.1111/mec.... explores the northward expansion of the Eurasian #reedwarbler. Despite a fast range shift, genetic diversity wasn't lost and only weak founder effect signs were found. Let’s break it down: 🧵👇 1/6 #ornithology

Reed Warbler range expansion paper just out, led by the amazing Nora Bergman 🧬🪶 with @informedbirds.bsky.social @katjaronka.bsky.social @fishcongen.bsky.social @rytikerttunen.bsky.social @frodefossoy.bsky.social and others doi.org/10.1111/mec.70077

Wow! First genetically confirmed Willow Tit x Marsh Tit hybrid, Norway: link.springer.com/article/10.1... I wrote in my book that previous hybridisation evidence is quite poor, so genetics needed: www.bloomsbury.com/uk/marsh-tit... To me, looks like a Willow Tit with a bill spot. Birder's nightmare!

🥳 New paper out in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society! Manakin’s moving melody: the interplay between courtship dance display and vocalization as a predictor of hybridization in manakins (Aves: Pipridae) academic.oup.com/biolinnean/a... #ornithology

Weekend challenge, can you get further than the second paragraph of this paper without falling asleep? Or maybe you just need something to help you to dose off? In case you are wondering, it's part of the second chapter of my DPhil. doi.org/10.1007/s116...

Your daily Avian Hybrids story! Are there still “pure” Hawaiian Ducks? avianhybrids.wordpress.com/2020/03/18/a... #ornithology

Very excited to announce my first paper! With @sjportugal.bsky.social, published in @ecol-evol.bsky.social 🧪🌍 We studied how flocks of homing pigeons change their flight in response to different ground cover, with some surprising results... doi.org/10.1002/ece3... #movementecology #ornithology

New paper: rdcu.be/eyR0w Great to see this one out, concerning findings but a lot more to understand about the ecology and transmission of AMR bacteria in wild bird populations and at bird feeders #ornithology 🧪

Lovely story from the brilliant @britishwildlife.bsky.social magazine. This mag is endlessly fascinating – recommend if you're not a subscriber already. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

New issue of #BirdStudy published today: www.tandfonline.com/toc/tbis20/7... UK Hen Harrier census Capercaillie vocal ID Barn Owls and agri-environment schemes Bird trends in Faroes, and Iceland Dunlin morphometrics Sparrowhawk breeding habitat Rock Partridge nest predation #ornithology

The most amazing parents a bird can ask for. Another field season is done - another year of watching flycatchers working endlessly to give these angry fluffballs as much care as possible 🤍🖤 thank you @deryktolman.bsky.social for the beautiful pictures!

Great weekend at @ccbowarden.bsky.social for the Lavender Festival. Ringing Demo with a good mix of passerines, 163 Stormies caught at night inc 3 controls (1 we caught at Galley Head on Wednesday night) and 20 Rock Doves for RAS project inc 9 new! @btobirds.bsky.social @willjsmith.bsky.social

New in #BirdStudy Goosanders were tracked using GPS tags: results showed their ranging behaviour on 2 Scottish rivers. Authors from @btoscotland.bsky.social & @ukceh.bsky.social Tracking of Goosanders Mergus merganser in Scotland (Wetherhill et al): doi.org/10.1080/0006... #ornithology #ukbirding

#BESMacro2025 Michal Jezierski on the island syndrome (and opening with a joke!)

The breeding season is now in full swing around Helsinki, with long days out in the reedbeds trying to better understand behavioural evolution in this species 🔬

Two months back I had the honour to visit UC Davis (kindly hosted by @katelaskowski.bsky.social) to give a Storer Lecture on the power of long-term studies of individuals in ecology & evolution. Great people doing great science despite the current climate. Video ⬇️ video.ucdavis.edu/media/The+Po...

Excited to share our new paper in Molecular Ecology! Using whole-genome and morphological data from silvereyes, we explore their evolutionary history and find that water barriers are more effective than continental distances in driving population divergence 🐤🧬 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Fancy a postdoc?

Congratulations Denise on a great DPhil journey!

The first wave of reed warbler eggs is finally upon us in Finland, the northern edge of their range🥚🪹🇫🇮

Delighted for wren researcher Michał @jezierskimt.bsky.social yesterday finding St Kilda's 9th Rustic Bunting, and first in 25 years! Amazing to see this eastern vagrant hopping about in the Village sunshine. @hebridesbirds.bsky.social @birdguides.bsky.social @scottishbirding.bsky.social

We've just had a brief visit to Uist to check in on the Rock Dove study population. A few (cute?) squabs ringed, and a nice selection of adults re-encountered through colour ring sightings. They seem to be having a good breeding season this spring 🐦🧬 @jezierskimt.bsky.social

We compared gut microbiota across >800 lab and wild house mice. Wild mice have more diverse, aerotolerant, and dynamic microbiotas than their lab counterparts. See our latest paper here: bmcmicrobiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.... #gutmicrobiome #musmusculus #wildmice

1/6 #BOU2025 Despite the prevalence of bird flock research, many questions remain as to what drives changes in the flight behaviour of cluster flocks. @sjportugal.bsky.social and I addressed some of these using flights of homing pigeons. #ornithology #animalbehavior #animalmovement #biologging

This March, we've ringed the 1000th Rock Dove since @jezierskimt.bsky.social and I began monitoring them in Uist in July 2019. We also re-captured a (now a bit elderly, but thriving) dove first ringed during that trip. Lots of great data collected on overwinter survival and individual condition. 🕊️🪶

Last week, @elife.bsky.social posted the version of record of our #aDNA study on Iberian aurochs/cattle. We found a lot of hybridization, probably sex-biased, stabilizing at ~20% about 4000 years ago (co-author Colin Smith coined the term 'cowrochs'). Read more: elifesciences.org/articles/93076

This is the dream 😍

Our new @adriftlab.bsky.social paper is out, lead by @alixdejersey.bsky.social showing the insidious impacts of plastics on seemingly health birds (1/5) www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Sometimes a pigeon isn't actually a pigeon:

Studies of domestic pigeons have taught us lots about cognition, navigation, and genetics. If you’d like to learn why their wild cousins are also worthy of scientific attention, I’ve written a Rock Dove @currentbiology.bsky.social ‘quick guide’: doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.065

Studies of domestic pigeons have taught us lots about cognition, navigation, and genetics. If you’d like to learn why their wild cousins are also worthy of scientific attention, I’ve written a Rock Dove @currentbiology.bsky.social ‘quick guide’: doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.065

Diary date for London, October: I'm talking at the Linnean Society & British Ornithologist's Club, on woodland bird declines (Marsh & Willow Tits). It's a ticketed in-person event: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-quieteni... #ukbirding #ornithology @linneansociety.bsky.social @britornitholclub.bsky.social

We're hiring a fieldworker to help with some of our projects in Wytham Woods this spring. Wonderful place to work (and live), especially in the spring. Get in touch if you'd like to know more.

Always nice to talk at the LUOVA doctoral school spring symposium!! This year I presented my first field season and some results on coordination in pied flycatchers 🐦‍⬛

New paper from @joewoodman.bsky.social DPhil thesis now published. Here, Joe (& 30 friends) use @spibirds.bsky.social to collate data on age structure for 32 Great Tit populations spanning 67 years & involving 130 000 individual birds. Why did we do this? 1/n onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

In Feb 23 we undertook a census of the UK naturalised Barnacle Goose population. The aim to produce an updated population estimate & report on winter distribution. Results have now been published in @britishbirds.bsky.social, with our thinking on future monitoring needs #Ornithology 1/7 ⬇️

Getting updates about this project was always a highlight during my DPhil.... Big congrats to Denise for such a fascinating piece of work! 🔬 The search for the Pigeon Louse Fly continues... 🐦