🚨 Bulbul project update: we are now measuring specimens in several collections in Asia, Europe and USA. The data will be used in a family-wide analysis of intraspecific variation and are destined for the next global dataset release (AVONET 2.0). If you want to join the project, get in touch. 🪶🌐🌎🧪

Several male Goshawks breeding deep in Poland's Białowieża Forest 'routinely travelled up to 20 km to hunt feral pigeons in a town' with the authors concluding that 'urban environments shape the foraging behaviour of raptors even within primeval forests' #ornithology 🌍 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We've uploaded recordings of many of our seminars over the last few months to our You-tube channel, including from @cornishjackdaws.bsky.social, Kristen Ruegg, Daniel Field, @jon-slate.bsky.social, Paul Acker, @thelabandfield.bsky.social & @kokkonut.bsky.social - Enjoy! www.youtube.com/@EGIOxford

vs wild Rock Doves from our study population in Uist, Outer Hebrides - with 'blue' colour, 'bar' pattern, 'white' rump, and 'wildtype' eye. In most feral populations, only a minority of individuals have this combination of phenotypes. @jezierskimt.bsky.social @uniofnottingham.bsky.social

Love seeing feral pigeon variation...surely the most extensive of any wild bird! How amazing that they thrive in the concrete jungle. Here are some examples from across the UK, being studied for projects supported by @gensocuk.bsky.social @leverhulme.ac.uk @britishecologicalsociety.org

When your proposed source of birds comes from a different subspecies from Scandinavia, an area even cooler than the region where you want to release is and warming climate is likely to be the major extinction driver, genetics matters very bugger much actually.

📢 New 🐂🧬 paper! Population structure and domestication history of the Javan banteng www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... We discuss soft domestication, post-divergence gene flow, and contrasting genetic load, highlighting the dual conservation and agricultural relevance of the banteng.

New story on the Avian Hybrids blog! Why did Darwin compare pigeons and horses in the Origin of Species? avianhybrids.wordpress.com/2026/02/11/w... A special blog post to celebrate Darwin Day! 😉🧬 #ornithology

🚨 Now out: Award Issue, collecting all seven mini-reviews included in the 2025 Review Competition written by early career researchers. Highlighting emerging or less explored topics in avian biology ➡️ vist.ly/4pzxr Cover: pair of female Laysan albatrosses by Bertille Mohring #ornithology

Thrilled to share my very first paper with you, now out in @avianbiology.bsky.social! We investigated whether innate immune function varies during moult in adult & juvenile blackbirds (undergoing complete or partial moult).

Still time to apply for our spring field assistant roles on the Wytham tit project. Deadline this Sunday. Wonderful work in a wonderful setting (but I'm biased). egioxford.web.ox.ac.uk/event/short-...

Norwich Market pigeons continue to be controversial 🐦 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Wise words.

New story on the Avian Hybrids blog! What will happen to the hybrid zone between Hooded and Carrion Crow? avianhybrids.wordpress.com/2026/01/28/w... Based on a nice simulation study by Dirk Metzler and his colleagues | #ornithology

We are hiring at the Wytham Woods for the upcoming field season. 4 roles available. Please share with anyone who might be interested. #UKbirds #birdringing

New paper published! 🧬🐥🦠 Host WGS data can be repurposed to uncover endoparasite diversity at low cost, without destructive sampling, and outperform 18S metabarcoding. We test it in silvereyes. This work was led by PhD student Sarah Nichols @biology.ox.ac.uk www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The wild rock dove is little understood and largely overlooked by scientists.

Here is a new year read for pigeon lovers! 🕊️🧬 I've written a little piece @theconversation.com about our work in Scotland studying wild Rock Doves: theconversation.com/what-ive-lea...

Managed to sneak in one paper before the New Year with coauthors @flyliceresearch.bsky.social and Daniel Gustafsson (not on Bsky)! Introducing 2 new species of bird-infesting lice that, despite having no wings, appear to be adept at jumping across bird hosts and continents! doi.org/10.1111/mve....

377 #pigeons sampled later, I’m happy to share that the first paper from my PhD is published in One Health Journal It’s about monitoring #disease in the #urban #landscape and why a one number city-level #prevalence report can be misleading You can read the full PDF here: doi.org/10.1016/j.on...

Interesting new paper, reviewing past work on Rock Dove navigation: doi.org/10.4081/rio..... We published a small GPS-tagging project (using Scottish doves) earlier this year, as a bit of a pilot study (doi.org/10.1093/orni...). There is loads more to learn about these birds! 🕊️🔭

The first drone census of the St Kilda gannet colony is now published in Scottish Birds! We counted 59,205 AOS in 2023 - similar to previous years. The overall impact of #HPAI appears less than at some other colonies, with notable declines in flatter areas 🧮 #ornithology #seabirds #NTSseabirds

As I'm planning next years field season, I wonder if anyone on here would like to run a small island project on Skúvoy with me. I will be catching and samling great skuas, but there will be good opportunities to investigate other aspects of seabird island ecology 🌍🧪 #seabirds

New issue of #BirdStudy Little Terns nesting in Morocco Urban Sparrowhawk diet Urban Blackbird & Robin song shifts Goosander tracking Alpine Wheatears Supplementary feeding of Turtle Doves Red Kites and wind turbines Białowieża Robin paternity www.tandfonline.com/toc/tbis20/c... #ornithology #birds

Our new paper is out today in Journal of the Royal Society Interface (link below). All about eggshell roughness: "Scratching beyond the surface: examining macroecological patterns in avian eggshell texture". Congrats first author Marie Attard, and thank you @leverhulme.ac.uk for the funding.

Contributed to #theBOUblog to share my experiences at the #EOU2025 in Wales this summer!

Third and final Uist trip finished! That's 481 individual Rock Doves ringed/recaptured/resighted during 2025, providing great data to help us understand this population. It's been nice to also get the opportunity to update the community on our project progress. @jezierskimt.bsky.social

Big congratulations @rsmehlhausenfranks.bsky.social on passing your viva today with minor corrections. It’s been a pleasure supervising you. Thank you to the examiners @rjpheathcote.bsky.social and @markjfbrown.bsky.social! And thank you Paul Devlin and @evolecollab.bsky.social for your help too!

We've been catching lots of Rock Doves in Uist 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 this week. @jezierskimt.bsky.social and I are here for our ongoing monitoring work. Hoping for lots of reports of colour-ringed birds to generate survival + movement data 🤓 🤞@uniofnottingham.bsky.social @leverhulme.ac.uk

Problems and progress in getting molluscan 🐌 genome assemblies, new paper out. Although the publication was much delayed, we recently redid the analysis, finding that actually not much ahs improved 😔 academic.oup.com/mollus/artic... 🧬 & 🖥️ #genomics #snails #molluscs

We are still interested in any found twite feathers for a study on the relationships and genetic diversity between the British groups - particularly now for birds of Scottish origin in the NE of England or, birds on the Avon. DM me for me more info. #birdringing

More Mapping the UK's Flat Flies Project results published today with Adrian Smith & @sheldonbirds.bsky.social 212 host-parasite interactions, including 70 not previously reported, & a recent switch to gulls by some Louse Flies, Hippoboscidae. @btobirds.bsky.social @dipteristsforum.bsky.social

New paper today in Proc B @royalsociety.org. We explored nest architecture in 3,685 species of birds, modelling the multivariate nature of nests, i.e. how shape, location or attachment co-occur. Then we explored how the environment affected nest architecture evolution. Spoilers in the title! 🪺🐦🌍

Interested in island life and arthropods? There's a new PhD project advertised at the University of Birmingham to study the evolution of 'island syndromes' in a chosen group of island arthropods, with both museum and fieldwork-based research are expected. More details at: centa.ac.uk/studentship/...

New paper out today on hippocampus neuron morphology in homing and feral pigeons. 🧵 link.springer.com/article/10.1... #neuroskyence #neuroethology #anatomy

Do you like islands? And/or arthropods? Please get in touch with me (m.t.jezierski[at]bham.ac.uk) or another member of the supervisory team! We will help you study island evolution in arthropods with a (funded) PhD @unibirmingham.bsky.social. 🪲🏝️🦋 centa.ac.uk/studentship/... *Please share this!*

Interested in a PhD in ornithology? Funding available for projects at the interface of ecology, behaviour & evolution from Oct '26 working on long-term population studies of tits at Wytham, based in @biology.ox.ac.uk in the new Life & Mind Building in Oxford www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

End of 24th yr of intensive Marsh Tit monitoring at Monks Wood. Similar juv recruitment to recent years (<30), half the number when project started. Some deaths of long-lived adults (5-7 yrs old), but our oldest bird survives (10.5 yrs). Crossbills, Siskins, Redpolls, Skylarks overhead. #ornithology

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!