People will be like ‘Bluesky is all academics & historians’ & I’ll be like, ‘You mean the people who enthusiastically tell me the coolest shit I ever heard?????’

Ruffed grouse drumming

Final Exam on Star Wars Day means that I'm wearing my most menacing Darth Vader shirt to proctor the exam.

My department is hiring a full-time Visiting Assistant Professor for next year to teach in our Intro Sequence! The deadline (May 15) is getting close. The job would be excellent for someone interested in teaching at a small college. Please RT! www.owu.edu/about/office...

Sunbirds don’t drink nectar like hummingbirds. They use intralingual suction: the tongue acts like a straw, moving nectar via pressure differences rather than capillarity. A clear case of biomechanical divergence despite ecological convergence. doi.org/10.1016/j.cu... @CurrentBiology #ornithology

Last bird class of the semester, love this student haiku Ornithology Walked in not a bird person Pleasantly surprised

Please share! I'm hiring a new NSF-funded Lab Technician, ideally to start in June at the Claremont Colleges. We study the development of social behavior and its regulation by behavioral, endocrine, and neural mechanisms using a highly social cichlid fish 🐠🧠🧪 +info TessaSolomonLane.com/Hiring

Witness the mesmerizing murmuration of starlings in Italy, a stunning display of nature's coordination and beauty as they dance through the sky in unison.

She took a year off from nesting on our feeder, but she’s back and sitting on 4 eggs! 🪺 🐦‍⬛🦉

Mixed up Cave and Cliff Swallows in this morning's Ornithology lab, but don't worry, the eBird police pointed out my error in less than 30 minutes. Phew!

Migration speed, timing, and long-term shifts in age structure in North American passerines during fall migration vist.ly/4y22b #AvianConservation #Migration #Demography

New paper out: Artificial selection for increased reproductive effort accelerates actuarial senescence and reduces lifespan in a precocial bird url: royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article... @uniexecec.bsky.social @erikpostma.bsky.social @joelpick.bsky.social y.social @oscarvedder.bsky.social

An early view of this accepted manuscript is now available! I'll share it again once it is typeset and everything, of course. This is the first robin paper out from my dissertation! With coauthors T.J. Benson, Ryan Paitz, Kevin McGraw, & @thecowbirdlab.bsky.social academic.oup.com/auk/advance-...

🚨NEW SCIENCE ALERT!🚨Read our new, open-access publication in Scientific Reports (@nature.com) describing #biofluorescence in #cassowary casques! Very excited to unveil this after keeping it secret for 5 years⬇️ www.nature.com/articles/s41... NYITCOM @akiopteryx.bsky.social @jonathanberman.bsky.social

We're hiring an Assistant Professor of Ecology! Come and join me and a great group of colleagues at University of Windsor in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Our job ad: efhc.fa.ca2.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid... Message me if you have questions. @ibiouwindsor.bsky.social @uwindsor.bsky.social

Saw Project Hail Mary (fun!). Minor spoilers...Centrifuges play a major role in the movie - it's how they generate gravity in space. However, when they use a tabletop centrifuge to spin their precious samples THEY DON'T BALANCE IT. 🤦‍♂️

Our new paper is out: "Acoustic differences persist in urban Parus major (Great Tit) over two decades of declining anthropogenic noise in Paris, France." A study of noise and bird song, by me and Hans Slabbekoorn, in Ornithological Applications @amornith.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1093/orni...

For my bird conservation lecture in orni, i wanna present 2-3 case studies, incl conservation successes and conservation “fails”. Also want to include both tropical and N American examples, and i want the bottom line to be that cons is as much or more about ppl than ab nature. What should i include?

My department at OWU is hiring a full-time Visiting Assistant Professor for next year! The job would be perfect for anyone interested in working at a small liberal arts college. Please share broadly (repost!). More details to follow... www.owu.edu/about/office...

My department at OWU is hiring a full-time Visiting Assistant Professor for next year! The job would be perfect for anyone interested in working at a small liberal arts college. Please share broadly (repost!). More details to follow... www.owu.edu/about/office...

Sometimes you just get that shot. Anna's hummingbird with a little friend, in my yard. Davis, CA. #birds #ants

Here is the Cornell Chronicle article about our PNAS paper on the evolution of milkweed toxins (N,S-cardenolides), to which the monarch butterfly is sensitive, despite being co-evolved with milkweeds! @cornellentomology.bsky.social news.cornell.edu/stories/2026...

Today’s Migrant: Pine Warbler! One of the earliest returning warblers, Pine Warblers often show up weeks before peak migration. Have you seen a Pine Warbler yet this spring?

We're hiring a post doc! Looking for a global change ecologist to work with Jenny McGuire & a multidisciplinary team including me and @jameststroud.bsky.social on the ecology side of things please share widely!

Please spread the word about a postbac position in Behavioral Neuroscience at Dartmouth with me, Shelley Warlow, and Kyle smith. The postbac will contribute to collaborative projects across the three labs aimed at studying the neuroscience of motivation and reward learning.

The forecasted wind chill for my first field lab in ornithology tomorrow morning is 9 degrees F. So much for delaying "until the weather warms up a bit." 🫠

For decades biologists assumed ravens follow wolves to their kills. Our paper @science.org shows something different: ravens rarely follow wolves far. Instead they remember areas where wolf kills are common and return to them—sometimes from >150 km away. doi.org/10.1126/science.adz9467 📷Dan Stahler

A fitting end to teaching speciation in the last week of undergrad evolution. Darwin 1858 March 11th, definitely was running on empty in week 10 of the quarter.

WHAT IF YOU JUST WENT FUCKING BIRDING INSTEAD www.androidpolice.com/i-use-gemini...

Our new article appears in today's issue of Ethology: "In the Danger Zone: Wrens Respond More Strongly to Experimentally Simulated Predators Near Their Nest" onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... We presented 3D-printed owls near versus far from nests of tropical wrens. How did wrens respond? 🧵1

come for the first time in history that Ted Cruz and Purple Martin populations have been meaningfully linked, stay for the spectacular paper. Well done team!

New paper! Bird nests (Wood Warblers) are hubs of invertebrate biodiversity on forest floor, hosting more species/individuals than leaf litter. Probably due to heat & food detritus. Losing Wood Warblers = ecological networks lost. #ornithology resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

I never, ever weary of the treasures to be found among the deep tracks, I mean DEEP STACKS, of Natural History.

Newest paper from my undergrad research with the wonderful Dr. Kira Bailey: When science isn't beautiful... 🧠🎨 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

"The richest Americans saw their net worth soar 120% between 2017+2025, a colossal leap from the 45% growth they had seen over the previous nine years. The number of U.S. billionaires jumped 50% by some estimates between 2017+2025, to more than 900 people." www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/u...

Our oldest kid thinks that my entire job is based around catching birds. Almost everyday as I'm leaving he says, "good luck catching birds today!" I decided against correcting him, mostly because catching birds everyday would be an amazing job.

I know this AI generated a lot of discussion yesterday, and it's shocking how much the pitch on their website changed overnight. It went from "Einstein does the work for you." to "Einstein is your partner and tutor." Either the negative press mattered or they got a lawyer. companion.ai/einstein

Field job in the beautiful mountains of NE Oregon doing passive acoustic monitoring and woodpecker demography just went live. Please share! jobs.rwfm.tamu.edu/view-job/?id...

I am hiring a research assistant (vampire bats), a Panama fieldwork coordinator (vampire bats), and also considering postdoc apps (social behavior, any species): socialbat.org/2026/02/19/h...

Our new paper is out today in Animal Behaviour: "Hushed disputes between noisy neighbours: Ovenbirds vary song amplitude during conflicts with territorial rivals." By Connor Acorn, Jenn Foote, & me. @animbehsociety.bsky.social How loud is an Ovenbird's song? It depends... 🧵1

Students are always surprised/confused to learn that roadrunners are in the same taxonomic order as cuckoos (Cuculiformes). Until I saw this video, I never gave much though to how similar their vocalizations could be.

We (as a society) are good and truly f*cked

Happy birthday to one of my favourite haters, Charles Darwin

The Birdsong Lab is recruiting graduate students to study vocal communication in tropical birds. The deadline to apply is less than a week away! #birds #birdsong #ornithology #animalbehavior #BirdsCanada #AcademicSky #SciComm

Can confirm it's possible to fully unplug from Amazon Prime. We did last year and ended up spending a large portion of those recaptured dollars at local small businesses. But, change is hard, goods are more expensive than ever, and Amazon remains the fastest, cheapest option for too much.

NSF GRFP applicants (and mentors): Was your application Returned Without Review and deemed ineligible despite fitting in the allowed topics? 1) Write NSF 2) Write your Congressperson 3) CC us at [email protected] so we can compile + follow up Details and template at grant-witness.us/grfp-letter

Looks like an amazing tool, especially for those of us teaching Ornithology, Evolution, etc. Also, just fun to cruise around and learn about new birds and taxonomic relationships.

Wow! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I first learned about the misleading scale of the Mercator projection in college geography and was astounded. So much of what I thought I knew about the world had to be reevaluated. I think about that moment often.

The Birdsong Lab is recruiting graduate students! Links in the comments. Please repost!