The grace and ease with which a Great Grey Owl moves is a sight to behold. Here a Great Grey uses her wings to slow down as she approaches a post to land on. And check out those talons! #wildlife #birds #owls

The visible song of a male Red-winged Blackbird in the morning light.

Limitations of molecular dating using constant birth-death rate priors in deep time reflected in Brachiopoda evolution www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Phylogeny of Eocene parrot- and passerine-like birds: vertebrate-zoology.arphahub.com/article/1825... 🪶🧪 (📷Mayr)

Thrilled to share our new paper out in @science.org, led by François Leroy and Petr Keil! Using the Breeding Bird Survey, we document not only a continent-wide decline in bird abundance since the 1980s — but, crucially, the acceleration of these declines over time. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Drivers of skull and hindlimb skeleton evolution in waterfowl: academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan... 🪶🧪 (📷 @raychatterji.bsky.social et al.)

New paper alert! 🦜 We gave wild cockatoos puzzle boxes across Canberra’s urban gradient. The finding? Urban birds approach faster, but are not better solvers. Our results suggest that urbanization shapes neophobia independently from cognitive performance. Read it here: doi.org/10.1093/behe...

Southern Giant Petrels are remarkably variable in plumage from dark brown to almost white. I don't know the origin but birds of this morph are sometimes called White Nellies. At sea, east of the Falkland Islands. 🪶🦑

Hey. Tell people when they do good job. When you like the stuff they make. When you like the characters they’ve created. The stories they’ve told. Nobody hears it as often as you think bc everyone thinks everyone hears it all the time. Trust. They don’t. Tell. Them.

New specimen of Alnashetri shows it to be a late-surviving non-alvarezsaurid alvarezsaur retaining unreduced forelimbs and representing an independent evolution of miniaturization: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧪 (📷Makovicky et al.)

『ふたりバス』①巻 発売から１週間で大きめの重版が決定しました！！ 大感謝です‼️🙌 引き続きよろしくお願いします🚎

Using multiple lines of evidence, we show that feral cats and red foxes are strongly implicated in most Australian mammal extinctions and in the ongoing imperilment of numerous extant species. academic.oup.com/bioscience/a... A large collaborative effort to rebut Wallach and Lundgren (2025).

I'm being hounded by the internet and electricity companies for my previous home to pay back outstanding debt, and each company is demanding over $300. I can't afford that on what I live on. And it's about to go to collections. Please help if you can. paypal.me/ccharmanderk

Spotted Towhee. Victoria, British Columbia. Many adults have striking red eyes, which may help with mate attraction and territorial displays. #birds #birding #wildlife #nature #photography #birdphotography #Nikon #BirdsSeenin2026

New long-snouted enantiornithean ("opposite bird") Gorgonavis alcyone: sjp.pensoft.net/article/1828... 🪶🧪 (📷 @nebreda.bsky.social et al.)

Duo Camping💜💙

Oh no. Hearing (via Neil Shubin) that Hans Sues has passed. Woah.

Life sometimes sucks but at least we got birds on earth

A week ago I found out that the grant I was confident would fund our spring mural will not, bc we're 2 blocks too deep into Kensington. This STINKS. This project rocks bc it's community driven, biodiversity-focused (& more! read on!) We're raising money to make it happen givebutter.com/KenzoMural

A cool sign I saw in downtown Greenville, SC!

A sweet little Black-capped Chickadee in a beech tree.

Sundays have been great since *You and I are Polar Opposites* and *Journal with Witch* started airing. Very different shows stylistically, but both absolute class acts in character writing. (I recommend watching *Polar Opposites* episodes second, because *Journal* gets... heavy.) #正反対な君と僕 #違国日記

In my mind, the Aplomado Falcon is the prettiest falcon out there. I was fortunate to see my first ones in Brazil nearly a decade ago, and have photographed them a few times since.

I swear, people should hire me to illustrate YA dinosaur books. I'm tired of traced and copied art, AI, jarringly outdated info, dragons (for some reason?), or "it's a kid's book so it won't matter if the T. rex had 3 fingers" cases. I'm here to bring you tasty paleoart to the mainstream.

For today's #BirdOfTheDay theme: #WingsOverWater I present this Pink-footed Shearwater that made a close flyby on a calm morning off Carlsbad, CA #birds #seabirds

I, too, would like to have a go at the new Spinosaurus soon, but in the meantime: Here's a slide from my recent talk, which covers the DOs and DON'Ts of restoring ginkgoes within palaeoart! Enjoy! #Ginkgo #FossilFriday #paleobotany #paleoart #SciComm

This is dangerous: name as many animals as you can, as fast as you can. Extinct animals mostly count, but it's weird about multi-specific genera. rose.systems/animalist/

Where will novel fire regimes threaten birds? Our paper in @natcomms.nature.com shows that most bird diversity hotspots facing future high-sev fire occur in places that historically burned at low severity - a critical mismatch. These are the spots to focus restoration. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Great Blue Heron. Victoria, British Columbia. Soaking up a bit of morning sun on a crisp February morning. Breeding plumes showing well as nesting season rapidly approaches. #birds #birding #wildlife #nature #photography #birdphotography #Nikon #BirdsSeenin2026

unfortunately the blob has run into some serious medical issues and his people could use a financial hand gofund.me/e837f1a1c

Futari Bus is a very cute and fluffy manga that just released its first volume! Recommended if you enjoy calm and wholesome stories. #ふたりバス

Just got my hot-off-the-press copy of the new edition of Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved, written by @tetzoo.bsky.social and yours truly, with gorgeous new cover art from @bobnichollsart.bsky.social: finally, a sauropodomorph on the cover 🦕🦕🦕 On sale soon!

To my Facebook friends, yesterday I was completely locked out of my account. When I tired to log in the passcodes that were sent were going to an email that no longer exists. As a result, I had to make a brand new account. It isn't fake but just account I had to make until I can get my old account.

I couldn't help myself, and have written up #spawnwatch thoughts at Tetrapod Zoology. Shout-outs to key #books on British #amphibians, to nature gardening, to the ever-present menace of free-roaming pet cats, but above all to the value of #frogs... tetzoo.com/blog/2026/2/...

New Miocene goose Meterchen luti (S.50822 in image): www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... 🪶🧪 (📷 @atennyson.bsky.social et al.)

I've decided to revise and update one of my most important and popular blogposts "How do I become a paleontologist?". I still get asked this every few weeks so having a new version of this post to share is so useful to put people on track. archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2026/02/17/h...

This is draft text, but putting these words into all my books from hereon: "I, Darren Naish, can confirm that AI was not used at any level nor in any capacity in the drafting, writing, editing or production of this book." It'll have to be in front or end matter but I'll make sure it gets included.

Morphology of the neck vertebrae in pelecanimorph birds, including the unusual necks of herons: academic.oup.com/iob/advance-... 🪶🧪 (📷Fleming & Black)

SVP Diversity Committee co-chair here. Feel free to dm me your thoughts. I’m working with DivComm and some other committees on an action plan and I’d love to know what you want to happen and what would make you feel safer, reassured, and welcome.

Review of the diet of troodontid dinosaurs: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... 🪶🧪 (📷Fan et al.)

Love between Northern Gannets can get feisty. They engage in this "mutual fencing" as part of their bonding. Happy Valentine's Day #wildlife #birds #ukwildlife #ornithology

Gentoo

Gone in 60 milliseconds! An Oriental Darter surfaces with its catch, momentarily stunned, as a White-throated Kingfisher executes a perfectly timed interception. 📍Bharatpur, Rajasthan. #lensonwildlife #ThePhotoHour 📷🪶🌿

Friends who have published non-fiction books, please link your work 😊

All the time. 🪶🧪

New sharp-billed stem-ibis Rhynchaeites mcfaddeni: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... 🪶🧪 (📷 @ksepkalab.bsky.social et al.)

Looking for new and creative ways to impress your valentine? Try hanging upside down by your toenails and making yourself look extra-wide! 🎨🪶 #SciArt #BirdArt

Another stick in the wall: we removed part of male great bowerbird bower walls to test effect on courtship displays. Males didn’t just focus on rebuilding the wall, they stepped up effort across all aspects of their display, showing they flexibly invest in multiple signals tinyurl.com/4ujmkw95