When one of your PhD students makes you very jealous… I believe the first Azure Tit for Norway this afternoon near Trondheim

Sorry to have missed out on this alignment as it moved steadily north at a rate of 0.51km/day - passed not far west of Oxford in Sept 2023 www.bgs.ac.uk/news/three-n...

Remembering a day back in May last year at Mai Po, Hong Kong, watching waders from the boardwalk hide when sudden torrential rain caused all the waders to stop foraging and this Terek Sandpiper to adopt this striking bill-upwards pose

Happy 2026! Out at dawn on Otmoor with the prospect of more geese to watch a tempting prospect for the New Year. Widely scattered across Ashgrave were 69 Russian White-fronted Geese, 20 Tundra Bean Geese (too distant for photos) and 9 Barnacles among the normal masses of Canada and Greylags.

Traditional collage of record shots of a rewarding yr's local birding. Highlights: Red-foot, Savi's Warb, Marsh Sand, Bluethroat, Twite & Tundra Bean; most of all friendly year-listing with @conormackenzie.bsky.social @tmbirding.bsky.social Simon Myers & Peerawant Chiaranunt collectively 202 species

For species of which we normally just see a handful each year, it's been a real treat to have so many wild geese around locally just now. This afternoon's flock of White-fronted Geese near Chimney Meadows totalled 185 birds - I think the largest flock seen in the county for some decades.

Over Christmas I've been binge-listening to this podcast which is great on deconstructing the junk claims made in pop science/politics/airport bestseller books (e.g. Gladwell, Pinker, Fukuyama etc) Done with a winning combination of righteous indignation and laugh out loud humour www.ifbookspod.com

Popped out to look at Farmoor this morning - pleasantly surprised to find, first, a female Scaup, and then a first winter male Common Scoter that had seemingly just dropped in onto the centre of F1

The superb Christmas 2025 goose-fest continued today with 2 Pink-footed Geese on a murky late afternoon by the Thames at Tadpole Bridge, in a mixed flock with c. 110 White-fronted Geese and a further 3 Tundra Bean Geese. Unprecedented numbers for Oxfordshire.

A photo from a Swedish bird news feed - an ID puzzle. Is this a partially leucistic Siberian Tit? Or a Willow Tit with some form of erythrism? Any thoughts @richardkbroughton.bsky.social?

More of the current wild goose influx today with @tmbirding.bsky.social's flock of 21 Russian White-fronted Geese on Port Meadow a rare chance to see undoubtedly wild birds at this urban site. Inevitably disturbed by dogs off lead - hard to conceive that there was once a regular wintering flock here

Congrats @jeffgroh.bsky.social et al. Some avocado trees open female-phase flowers in the morning & then male in afternoon. Others show complementary pattern (m->f), to synchronize pollination of two types. Jeff show this to be a >45Mya polymorphism at a transcription factor across 100s of species.

Out first thing on a chilly Christmas morning to see the 15 Tundra Bean Geese that arrived at Otmoor yesterday afternoon: part of the widespread influx of wild geese across the South of England. A rare bird locally - these the first for quite a few years. Also 10 Russian White-fronted Geese here.

Biology Department Christmas Lecture last week - available at link. Brilliant work from Dr Beth Mortimer et al. on the huge range of biological questions & applications - from next generation robotics to conservation - opened up by studying animal seismic sensing www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8oe...

Rather life-like I hope you’ll agree! Photo of the real thing for comparison Highlight of a great autumn birding week with @tombedford.bsky.social

It's the hope that kills you...

Always admired and enjoyed Craig Benkman’s work on Crossbill-Conifer coevolution - looking forward to diving into this at Christmas

Great talk by @rona-learmonth.bsky.social at #BES2025 on the absence of small scale local adaptation by winter moths to oak tree bud burst. Read more in this preprint www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Enjoyed working on this with @andreaestandia.bsky.social @nilomr.bsky.social @jon-slate.bsky.social. One thing these data enabled was estimate the frequency of close kin among immigrants. While rarer (c. 30% as common) than in locally-born birds we do find quite a few cases. For me, the origin… 1/n

We lost Tova today after a brief but brave battle against infection. She's been a huge presence in all of our lives for the past six years and for me personally played a very important role in getting me through some difficult times a few years ago. Forever in our thoughts with deepest love.

Sorry to hear that Martin Parr has died. When he was documenting Oxford University he came out to Wytham Woods to photograph our team doing fieldwork - featuring @mcmahok.bsky.social & @lucymaplin.bsky.social as well as Fraser Bell & Ella Cole. The generally serious demeanour was at his request!

Led by Professor Jane Langdale @biology.ox.ac.uk, the C4 Rice Project builds on decades of interdisciplinary research working to ensure global food security. Discover the incredible story of the multi-decade battle to make better rice ⬇️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3RY0vxzFpg

To Oxford, to talk to the Biochemistry Society about DNA and Rosalind Franklin. Talk is at 19:00 in St Peter's College if you fancy coming along.

Cool paper suggesting that naturally higher body T˚ in birds leads to flu viruses originating in birds being pre-adapted to resist mammalian fever as a defence mechanism... Avian-origin influenza A viruses tolerate elevated pyrexic temperatures in mammals | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Why do we observe some plant #phenotypes but not others? This study explores the multivariate #PhenotypicSpace of a widely distributed #plant species to reveal how interplays between population history & natural selection shape phenotypic diversity in #Arabidopsis @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/43Z8IWi

Just a reminder of today’s @egioxford.bsky.social seminar - all welcome

Well, this makes cheerful reading: assessing the economic cost of Brexit. In their almost understated conclusion: "In the case of Brexit, there was a substantial economic impact on the United Kingdom" siepr.stanford.edu/publications...

This looks great - amazing work. Excellent video as well: www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWCM...

This week's @egioxford.bsky.social seminar is by @mmoiron.bsky.social at 3.30 on Friday. Still a highlight of the week getting people together and hearing about new science

Couldn’t resist this - suitably hefty feeling for a long & transformative life in science

Deep in the Sumatran jungle today we found the extraordinary flowers of Rhizanthes pushing their fangs through the forest floor. A sap-sucking, leafless parasite, this is one of the world's weirdest plants.

This has gotten surprisingly little attention — it's not even on the front page of @science.org right now — but it's really hard to describe what the SAFE Research Act would do to US science and scientists without sounding insane www.science.org/content/arti...

We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing: a 🧵 1/n Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820 Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/... Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

Are Oxford‘s poorest areas sharing in its prosperity? As billionaires pour more money into the city’s AI and biotech industries, we take a deep dive into gentrification in Oxford and the city’s housing crisis. (With maps and data!) oxfordclarion.uk/gentrifying-...

"Sniper Tourism" - just beggars belief www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

Details of this week's @egioxford.bsky.social seminar - all welcome, either in person (LaMB LT2, 1530 Fri 14 Nov), or online - details of how to get link in the poster below

Careful dissection of genetic association claims in a couple of recent studies of human genetics royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Reminder of today’s seminar at 3.30

View from my office window in the new @biology.ox.ac.uk building. I didn’t *ask* to be put somewhere with a Rook colony right outside the window but it worked out pretty well 🤓

🚨 Come join the fantastic long-tailed tit team 🚨 🐦We are recruiting a field technician to collect behavioural data on a long-term studied population of wild long-tailed tits (passerine birds). 🪶20 months contract in Sheffield, UK. 🌲Deadline: 23/11/2025. jobsite.sheffield.ac.uk/job/Technici...

This is an exciting project as part of an exciting larger grant - excellent opportunity

We're hiring! Post-doctoral fellow in evolutionary ecology w/focus on ecophysiology. Uncover why global warming and heatwaves reduce reproductive success and cause excess mortality in wild birds. Work with @cyanistesnord.bsky.social 👏 Please apply no later than 25 November. 👉 lnkd.in/dkAh9jnc

This video summary (I think a new innovation for the RBBP) is excellent

This week's EGI seminar - 3.30 on Friday in @biology.ox.ac.uk with Kristen Ruegg on the Bird Genoscape Project. Also live-streamed; details below www.birdgenoscape.org

Once a year I like to remind myself and others how amazing Guira Cuckoo eggs are!

Dawn visit to Otmoor this morning rewarded with the elusive Water Pipit that's been around here the last few days in front of screen 1. Never close, light poor, and always looking nervous but a tricky species to see locally these days.

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

Reminder of today’s @egioxford.bsky.social seminar from @cornishjackdaws.bsky.social in @biology.ox.ac.uk - will actually be in Lecture Theatre 1

A very close singing Coal Tit yesterday morning - fascinating to see these almost perfectly regular repeated motifs in the song with very rapid changes over huge frequency range. Must require some very precise neuromuscular control of bird's vocal system macaulaylibrary.org/asset/644354...

Coming up soon (9 am today) an opportunity to hear this classic episode of In Our Time on Bird Migration featuring Tim Guilford of @biology.ox.ac.uk www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b...