A real bird. (Hooded Merganser male) #birds 🦉

Do you know how insecure and empty you have to be to accept someone else's Nobel Peace Prize? Especially after the prizegivers make clear that the award is given on the merits and cannot be conveyed? It's twice as humiliating as accepting a manufactured peace prize by a sports league.

Baja California dreamin' on such a winter day... ⚒️

I sat for a while this morning in the pre-dawn darkness, staring up at the stars. I remember seeing a satellite for the first time in the night sky when I was a teen. It was remarkable then, notable. Now I can't look up at night for even 2 minutes without satellites crossing my field of view. 🔭

It's really good. If you haven't read it yet, do it now before the movie comes out.

A close-up of a red grouse from the Durham Moors yesterday #birds #ukbirding #ukwildlife #birdphotography #naturephotography

On Fridays, we post folded rocks. Check out these tight/isoclinal folds in layering* within the Noonday Dolomite in upper Mosaic Canyon, Death Valley NP, CA. * Is it bedding? Transposed foliation? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ #FridayFold ⚒️

#FossilFriday Graptolites are extremely useful as zonal fossils in the Ordovician and Silurian. Some look like pencil marks but better preserved examples, like this Monograptus priodon from the Wenlock of Scotland, resemble miniature saw blades.

This Red-Shouldered Hawk looked cold and miserable this morning. :( #birds 🦉

Geological map of Greenland 🪨🧪

Geotweeps, who has written the best popular accounting of pelagic/ribbon 𝙘𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙩? Anyone? I don't see any cherty treatment in the trade paperback oeuvre of Bjornerud, Prothero, or McPhee. ⚒️

'Four centuries old Topiary in the cloister garden at Pazo de San Lorenzo in Santiago de Compostela, Spain.' www.pazodesanlorenzo.com/en/pazo/

It is a Greater White-fronted Goose. Two of 'em, in fact. 🦉

A species whose range distribution map looks like this showed up in my county (Albemarle, VA) today. Want to make a guess which one? #birds 🦉

First day of classes for the new semester. 20 years ago, I started working full time geology teaching at community college. ⚒️

Emboldened by my newfound appreciation of the correlation between harriers and short-eared owls In terms of habitat, I'm going to start a series of sunset vigils across the county in the appropriate grasslands to see if we have short-eared owls here. 🦉

Wilson's Snipe. Lickinghole Basin, Crozet, VA. #birds 🦉

Winter Wren. Charlottesville, VA, USA. #birds 🦉

#MolluscMonday: a lichen-encrusted example of the large Late Jurassic ammonite Titanites at Portland, Dorset.

Going to do some research prior to my San Francisco field course starting up next week: ⚒️

New video about the JTRACK expedition's work on better understanding stress, earthquakes, and tsunami at the Japan Trench subduction zone: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoBN... ⚒️🌊

Weird to be commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Am Rev while living under a government that has a) sent armed troops to occupy cities perceived to be too rebellious, b) rendered largely irrelevant the representative branch of government, and c) claimed imperial right to rule other countries.

4 more days to get your abstract in for @geosociety.bsky.social's Cordilleran section meeting in Loreto, Baja California Sur! (April) www.geosociety.org/GSA/Events/S...

Fuck this man's grotesque narcissism.

What a week... Take a moment to return your mind to the sublime, the ancient, the lithological, the ductile. #FridayFold This one's from upper Mosaic Canyon in Death Valley, CA ⚒️

It's been a week. Time for #FossilFriday. This is a Dalmanites from the Silurian Rochester shale. There is some restoration on the genal (cheek) spines and tail. The reason I bought this specimen is the brachiopods. The trilobite was buried upside down and the brachiopods are in living position.

It's hard to say anything useful about the news, but this metaphor hits hard and feels apt.

Saw-whet owl was a bit more awake this afternoon. #birds #birding #owl #wildlife #photography 🦢🪶📷

Sandhill cranes foraging in a field north of Staunton, VA this evening. #birds 🦉

Short-eared owl tonight, north of Staunton. A new one for my Virginia list. #birds 🦉

Spectacular footage of pyroclastic flows at Semeru Volcano in Indonesia in November: ⚒️ youtu.be/rybUgYtvVFM?...

My man, Béla! ✊

NASA Discovers Distant Planet With Conditions That Could Sustain Rocks https://theonion.com/nasa-discovers-distant-planet-with-conditions-that-could-sustain-rocks/

Five years ago.

Community college, junior college & city college faculty, are you interested in going to sea for eight days on an Alaska-to-Bay Area route with STEMSEAS? Join me! stemseas.org/2026-2yc-fac... We have an informational webinar this Friday afternoon. ⚒️🌊

The discovery that the continents are in continuous motion is fairly recent—dating back only to the late 1960s — and one woman was responsible for decoding what it meant for California and much of the West Coast. buff.ly/2vAwspH

My dog found a baby turtle while we were walking around the lake this afternoon.

Saw some Common Mergansers today on Chris Greene Lake. 🦉 #birds

My fellow JTRACK outreach officer, @nurschuba.bsky.social, led the writing of this kid-directed article about the expedition: kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.... ⚒️

Wild way of organizing property in a town!!

Look at that title font! 💛💛💛

There are people who say there's no such thing as the best seabird in the world. These are people who haven't seen Light-mantled Albatross. North of Elephant Island yesterday. #Birds #Albatross #SuperSeabirdSunday

We have to impeach him.

Sound OFF, but my god what a beautiful fossil ⚒️

A picture is worth 1000 words... This appeared on the BBC News today, showing the increase in solar electric generation in the UK. Not sure who produced it, but genuinely think this is a genius piece of scientific communication - the construct and choice of colour scale is near-perfect. Chapeau!

Wood engraving, near finished, on 10x10cm block of lemonwood. The columnar basalt cliffs of Rubha Hunish at the northern tip of Skye. A steep path, with a little scrambling at the top, leads down from the break in the cliffs onto a cliff-rimmed peninsula […] [Original post on mastodon.online]

First #FridayFold of 2026 - a new one for me, since I was able to hike further up Mosaic Canyon this year than I have on any previous visit. This appears to be a somewhat shaly subsection of the Noonday Dolomite? ⚒️

#FossilFriday (or at least #BiologicallyMediatedSedimentaryStructureFriday) One of the North Pole Dome, Australia, Paleoarchean stromatolites

Hoping to see Cape Breton this summer. 🤞

I ended up in position 7 in my county for eBird stats last year. Chasing the top five is a silly, arbitrary goal, but I find it motivates me to go outside & spend time looking for #birds. I'm old enough now not to care if it's silly if it makes me happy. 🦉