NEW PAPER: Radar data from Alaska show birds shift to diurnal flights as nights shorten, but peak migration still clusters near solar midnight—highlighting strong stabilizing pressure on flight timing that overrides pressure to maintain nocturnality. ➡️ vist.ly/48ata #ornithology #birds 🪶

US marketing companies are helping to rebrand the genocide in Gaza | Arwa Mahdawi

An interesting, informative and digestible issue of @britishbirds.bsky.social journal this month 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

Austrian Pratincole was a name I had never heard of; a reflection of changing borders given that this species presumably never bred (?) within the current nation state.

A new study has revealed how melanin affects the weight of feathers, raising questions regarding the implications of colour for birds:

Very cool new #seabird paper showing no difference in breeding success between healthy and black-eyed gannets, but a worrying overall decline in productivity following the #avianflu outbreak. 🦠🐣 Read the paper here 👉 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #seabirds #ornithology

It feels like a lot of the ibises have already moved on; unlike southern herons they need extensive areas of shallow water - maybe many will be heading back for the rice harvest in Iberia? #UKBirding #Ornithology

What a time to be alive... edition.cnn.com/2025/09/26/p...

👀Behind the Paper!👀 🐦Author Rafael Dias explains why small places can matter in big ways, shares the logistics cross-country research efforts, and discusses balancing research, teaching and creativity🎨 Read it here👇 buff.ly/EfBqyy2 🧪🌍

Want to work with Curlews? The RSPB are hiring a Curlew Project Officer in North Wales! A chance to work on the frontlines of Curlew conservation, monitoring, protecting, and restoring habitat for this iconic bird. 👉 Apply now via RSPB Careers: buff.ly/kR5vMzN

Corporate capture is a large part of the reason for the general enshittification of large aspects of daily life. Populism is tapping the frustration and sense of decay, but operates on behalf of the those causing the problem.

Trump visa policy requires universities to pay huge fee to hire foreign scholars | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪

UK is well on course for losing Willow Tit, Spotted Flycatcher & Wood Warbler as breeding species in our lifetime. Wood Warbler already virtually gone from England. I think Willow Tit would be first extinction of a resident bird since Capercaillie in 1700s or White-tailed Eagle in 1918. #ornithology

New issue of #BirdStudy out today! Birds on solar farms Numbers of released Pheasants & Partridges Woodlarks & Meadow Pipits in Central Europe Hawfinch supplementary feeding Black-billed Cuckoo diet Serengeti Secretarybirds Tracking Lesser Flamingos www.tandfonline.com/toc/tbis20/c... #ornithology

KAMALA: “One by one by one, titans of industry have been silent - it’s not like they’re gonna lose their yacht or their house in the Hamptons… capitalism thrives in a democracy. At some point be the guardrails against a tyrant.”

I wrote my new Nature World View in this transition — one last reflection before leaving Colombia. It explains why inequities persist in science, even when dressed up as inclusion, and why we must stop mistaking access for change. 👉 rdcu.be/eGEun

The last of the 4 previous #StKilda Baird's Sandpiper records was in 1999, and finding a 2nd bird on 16th was a surprise in itself. That 2nd bird was neither of these two though, meaning that Will found a 3rd of the year this morning. Madness! @birdguides.bsky.social @hebridesbirds.bsky.social

Latest government stats show a continued decline in many bird species across the UK 🪶🧪 www.gov.uk/government/s... These data are made possible by the dedication of expert volunteers, allowing us to track common bird populations for >50 years

Scientists have invented a pollen-based sunscreen, which their results suggest is as effective in blocking harmful ultraviolet rays as sunscreens containing chemicals that contribute to coral bleaching and pollution in oceans. The researchers also showed their pollen sunscreen doesn’t harm corals.

Troubling scenes from an Arctic in full-tilt crisis The heat that hit Svalbard in February was so intense that scientists could dig into the ground with spoons, "like it was soft ice cream." grist.org/climate/trou... #Arctic #Climate #Heat #Ice #Svalbard #Environment #Geography

One of our local colour-ringed juvenile Ring Ouzels has turned up near Glossop. The lower bird in photo, seen feeding on Rowan & Hawthorn. Ringed in the nest at Stanage on 27/6/25 (second brood) - an 18km movement west Thanks to reporter Paul Cole for sharing his photos #ukbirding #yorkshirebirding

1/ The Wild Bird Indicators, using BTO data, have been updated today by Defra! ⬇️ Sadly, the ‘all bird species’ index, comprising the population trends of 130 species, has been in a slow continuous decline in the UK since the 1970s, down by 18% and by 4% in the last five years. 📉 #Ornithology

🧵 There’s a deeper divide at work in how people talk about “censorship” and disinformation. It’s the clash between negative freedom extremists and positive freedom practitioners.

Why are the American president's claims about autism the first item on British news bulletins? He's not our president, the advice doesn't apply here and he's not presented any evidence to support his assertions. So why spread these claims? What make this the biggest story in the UK?

What on Earth is this? An "in depth" BBC article about free speech in the UK that only cites examples of right-wing/ 'anti-woke' speech being suppressed. How can you mention Lucy Connolly but completely ignore Palestine Action / Just Stop Oil? Gob-smacking. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

In the late 80s the Conservative (!) government brought in stronger clean water rules in the UK. Through the 90s + 00s river health rose. Salmon returned to rivers like the Thames. Then, in 2010, the Cameron government, told regulators to ease up on enforcing environmental rules... 🧵 1/4

Great article in Harvard Business Review on the emergence of 'AI-generated workslop'. Marking student work, reviewing grants, papers etc now takes much longer as I can no longer assume that cited references a) exist or b) are relevant to a potentially spurious case study share.google/GVKpoOVe48Rb...

A delicious win-win: Oyster farming helps sequester carbon, not just because the bivalves lock CO2 in their shells but even more so because the oysters promote primary production and organic carbon sedimentation in the sea around them. In PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

People say "autism never used to exist" and then you go to the Natural History Museum and the exhibit has a caption like "Born in 1762, The Revd [name] was famously irascible, steadfast in his routine, and dedicated his life to collecting 25,000 rare beetle specimens".

A mild legal proposal to harmonised #forest data collection in the EU could die today if @eppgroup.bsky.social decides to band together with the extreme right. As forests get hammered by climate change & out of control logging, we should at the very least have comparable data on what is going on.

Can species reintroductions harm biodiversity rather than help it? Are we using reintroductions as a distraction from the real drivers of our nature crisis? Listen to my conversation with the one and only @alexanderlees.bsky.social 🌍🦤🧪🪶 ➡️ pod.fo/e/32fae6

This ought to be engraved somewhere.

Did some mandatory gen AI training. Unfortunately, I was given an opportunity to provide feedback.

Do you know someone who does outstanding work on avian pop modelling & forecasting? Or who works at interface of avian conservation and decision making given uncertain futures? Submit a keynote nomination for the BOU conference Avian Futures here: bou.org.uk/event/avian-... . Deadline is next week!

I am looking for a multispecies archaeologist with a strong theoretical and interpretive profile to join my group (100%, 3 years): uni.koeln/2E7CR Deadline: 30.09.2025. Apply here: uni.koeln/ZQMKA ("Wiss2508-21") @nakedprimate.bsky.social @mesh-research-hub.bsky.social @unicologne.bsky.social

Faltam 49 dias para a COp e apenas 37 países submeteram suas NDCs. O prazo era fevereiro. www.climatewatchdata.org/ndc-tracker

What “fascism” means Full: www.instagram.com/reel/DO6EvDz...

Dark-sided Flycatcher in California! Will this be the year that we finally get one in the UK? #UKBirding ebird.org/checklist/S2...

As both a lifelong birder and a paleo person, I really enjoyed this paper on bird feeding traces. www.cambridge.org/core/journal... I had thought about bird footprints in the rock record before, but confess I hadn’t really considered beak and dabbling marks etc. I’ll look harder next time!

"10 years after the Paris Agreement, governments plan to produce more than double the volume of fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5°C" Stark "production gap" report from @unep.org today www.sei.org/publications...

Useful taxonomy of authoritarianism:

Just back from a pelagic trip out to the Whittard Canyon area on the continental shelf edge with @scillypelagics.bsky.social @scottinscilly.bsky.social @nomadbirder.bsky.social Madeiran Storm Petrel reclassified from MEGA!!! to scarce summer visitor in one evening with 84 counted last night! 😂

A new study estimates Niassa Special Reserve in Mozambique hosts 68–76 breeding pairs of Taita falcons. Woodland clearance, charcoal production, agriculture & domestic fowl could shift the balance in favor of peregrines & lanners. Conservation measures & resilience of miombo woodlands offer hope.

Humpback Whale initially close-in off the Bluebell before turning and heading north further out slowly. #Spurncetaceans @rarebirder.bsky.social

Possibly the most chaotic #museum collection I've ever seen: a drawer containing literally thousands of pinned #flies, at the Chau Chak Wing Museum at @sydney.edu.au. True fact: this drawer contains more museum objects than the entire UK National Gallery.

LESSER KESTREL on #StKilda! Retrospectively identified from Will Miles' excellent images on 16th Sept. We'd recorded a Kestrel from 12th, possibly the same bird, but sadly not relocated today. @birdguides.bsky.social @scottishbirding.bsky.social @hebridesbirds.bsky.social

www.exeter.ac.uk/study/fundin... PHd on the understanding of population change in insectivorous birds 🐤