I love the way science used to be written. Is it necessary to know that the author was pushing his baby in a pram while making observations of insects? Perhaps not, but it provides delightful context, while assuming the reader is familiar with his previously published baby-wheeling-related work.

NEW PUBLICATION on stopover ecology of Songbirds during spring migration: After packmor et al. 2020 (Mov Ecol) found that trans-Saharan migrants react differently to weather for migratory departure, we aked ourselves, whether this is also valid for spring migration? 🐦 a thread 🧵 on 7 hypotheses:

A dramatic end for an ambitious Spoonbill. Yday morning LAYLA crashed into the ocean just offshore Madeira, 56h after departing from the Wadden Sea. She rested barely 7h even though she found nice Spoonbill hotspots on the way. Poor choices... #ornithology www.globalflywaynetwork.org/tracks/speci...

A true Bluesky — filled with raptors! After days of rain, we were greeted by a bright, blue, cloudless sky this morning! The result? Thousands of birds and a high species diversity. With the main message: the eagles are coming! Stay tuned for more! For daily totals: www.batumiraptorcount.org/data

The www.BirdEyes.org team is thrilled to announce a new paper by Mohamed Henriques showing how Spoonbills change space use over the course of their summer stay in the eastern Dutch Wadden Sea. After breeding, many adults converge in the Lutjewad area. #ornithology www.birdeyes.org/lutjewad-amo...

Are animals randomly distributed in the air, or is there a structure to where and when we find them? In our new paper we outline factors that shape habitat use in the air, from abiotic structure to biotic interactions. A lot of fun discussions behind this one! 🦅🦋🦇🌬 www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

This achievement was only possible thanks to our amazing and hard-working team – counters, trainees, coordinators – and our wonderful host families for their endless hospitality. Check out our daily counts and news flashes here: www.batumiraptorcount.org/data 2/2

Here we go!!

#ornithology www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The Honey Buzzards keep on coming! With another 50K+ counted today, we’ve now passed half a million HBs this season! Rising numbers of Black Kites — as their peak is still ahead — pushed our overall total past 700K! And it’s not just the bulk species 👇 #ornithology 📸Eduardo C. Wals 1/2

Foremost, we found it an exciting experience to publish our scientific debate in such a public manner, and thank @moveandconserve.bsky.social and co-authors for the constructive and cordial discussion! Exciting times ahead — only together can we connect birds, people & places across the flyway!

A new study led by @moveandconserve.bsky.social used GPS tracking to test the monitoring potential of Eilat and Batumi. An invaluable step toward linking counted birds to their origins, but we found it needed some elaboration from a migration count perspective! Our commentary: tinyurl.com/nnbzu7kc

So they wrote a comment www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... They raised some good points, improving our initial work, and allowing us to address a few more aspects of our work @barthoekstra.bsky.social @tohar-tal.bsky.social @wmgvs.bsky.social #conservation #ornithology 🧪🐾🌎

Science as a conversation: In January, we published a paper about migratory bird counts www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... For different reasons, we did not include the managers of the bird counts. But the @batumiraptorcount.org people had some important comments #conservation #ornithology 🧪🐾🌎

Some asked if we had a ‘beef’ with Efrat et al. — quite the contrary! Their elegant work merited a proper response, so we wrote a letter to share our view on their work and long-standing Qs about migration counts. If the khachapuri doesn't get to us first, we still fit together through one door! 😁

Migration is a go! Yday 3 @globalflyway.bsky.social GPS-Spoonbills flew from 🇳🇱 to 🇫🇷. Among them were adults MIGUEL (orange) and STERN (purple) who met each other in flight at noon, and then flew together for 9h until they split up again south of Le Havre. www.globalflywaynetwork.org/tracks/speci...

Timmermans schuift aan in een talkshow:

Now onto the 1 million! Check out daily count updates and news flashes here: www.batumiraptorcount.org/data #RaptorResearch

Luckily, we have a great team of counters, trainees, and coordinators to count and identify the many thousands of raptors heading their way! Make sure to check out our daily count updates and season totals here: www.batumiraptorcount.org/data Stay tuned for more news from #BRC17! 3/3

HALF A MILLION RAPTORS! 🦅 After a few slower days (~30K+), #BRC17 hit the absolute jackpot yesterday! Around 11 am, the floodgates opened — massive streams of Honey Buzzards & Black Kites pushed us past 100K raptors in a single day! Bringing the season total to 540K😍 🧵1/3 Video by Zülfü Farajli

Earlier this week a paper dramatically reduced the realistic potential for forest carbon storage. Now another downgrades the capacity of geological storage. Emissions reductions are the only effective climate action.

This month, WaderTales will be ten years old. I'm going to create a thread that highlights some of the research findings that have surprised me. Plenty of "Wow!" & "I didn't know that!" moments. Here's a link to the catalogue of 150 blogs wadertales.wordpress.com/about/ #ornithology

In the upcoming week or so, we expect to count another 100-200K Honey Buzzards as we're moving towards the half a million raptors milestone. You can follow our daily count updates, all uploaded to the @trektellen.bsky.social platform, via our website: www.batumiraptorcount.org/data

The Honey Buzzards have well and truly arrived, so the first 296,911 have already been counted #BRC17 🪶. It's been a period of everything: rain, fog, blazing sun, and then suddenly the sky explodes with raptors in typical Batumi fashion. The team's report: www.batumiraptorcount.org/brc17/2025/8...

Hey #ornithology folks - lots of great talks by a wide range of folks from all over the world. I'll be talking about how we maintain hope at @adriftlab.bsky.social when our work is emotionally difficult. It's only £10 in person/£5 online (concessions available). Spread the word! #AvianOdyssey

We are so looking forward to this event coming up on Saturday 20th September: www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/... Journey into the wonderful world of birds with leading conservationists and ornithologists with a full day of inspiring talks at the Natural History Museum. Don't miss out!

Conservation status of Marbled Teal Marmaronetta angustirostris in Armenia and Türkiye | doi.org/10.1017/S095... | Bird Conservation International | #ornithology 🪶

🦢The International Swan Census involves counters to carry out a one-off count on the weekend of 17th-18th January 2026. This involves counting Whooper and Bewick’s Swans, as well as recording age assessments and habitat. Visit the vacant site map⬇️ app.bto.org/gsmp/public/... #Ornithology

How important is Iceland for waders? Take Dunlin, as an example ... ▪️Irish population ... c 30 pairs ▪️UK population ... c 9,500 pairs ▪️Icelandic population ... c 275,000 pairs More here in blog: wadertales.wordpress.com/2025/08/27/i... based on new paper by Verónica Méndez et al #UKbirding

A newly published study has documented in detail the status of Saker Falcon in the Caucasus region for the first time:

New distribution models for Icelandic waders show how temperate to arctic species overlap across climatic and environmental gradients. Led by Dr. Verónica Méndez nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... @wildlifebiology.bsky.social #ornithology #waders #shorebirds #ConservationScience🌍

Buitengewoon ernstig dit. Onderzoeker @vlinderstichting.bsky.social @soortennl.nl met de dood bedreigd vanwege onderzoek naar #pesticiden. Het rapport is offline gehaald. www.gelderlander.nl/wageningen/o...

We zagen het aankomen, er is voor gewaarschuwd en we lieten het gebeuren. The #greatbarrierreef is een #deadzone geworden. nos.nl/l/2515494

The #Milanada is on! After several days of powerful #levante winds a slight drop in the wind opened the departure gate across The #Straits and into Africa the sky a kaleidoscope of mesmeric migrating Black Kites as thousands upon thousands depart! #FlywayBirding

Your daily Avian Hybrids story! Observations confirm intergeneric hybridization between Common Black Hawk and Red-Shouldered Hawk avianhybrids.wordpress.com/2020/02/24/o... #ornithology

A pair of Montagu's Harrier has bred at a secret location in England this summer, the RSPB has announced:

Early this morning #Whimbrel POTSKAR landed in Guinea, W Africa, after flying 7000+km from St-Petersburg, Russia. It took POTSKAR 5.5 days of NON-STOP flight, varying altitude from 10s of meters over the Baltic and the Med, to >5km over land. #ornithology www.globalflywaynetwork.org/tracks/speci...

Much looking forward to attending and speaking at the Avian Odyssey '25. Certainly can't beat the location...!

After a 10 day sojourn in the taiga of N Finland, #Whimbrel LYTSE GRIENE decided it was time for a change of scenery, and travelled 4000+km to the salt marsh of Cádiz (Spain) in ca. 64h. Made short stops of at most a few hrs on the coast of Sweden and N France, averaging > 60km/h. 🤩 #ornithology

In less than two weeks, we’ll be back at the Batumi bottleneck for the 17th Batumi Raptor Count #BRC17. Preparations are well underway, and excitement is building. Over the next few months, we’ll have plenty of exciting news to share with you — it’s already shaping up to be another memorable season.

🚨 First PhD chapter is out! My work thus far, with @andy2dobson.bsky.social We found that formerly common species have declined the fastest, on average. 📄 North American bird declines are driven by reductions in common species | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

July is a good time to see the pronounced age difference in the timing of Black-tailed Godwits @globalflyway.bsky.social. While most adults left the breeding range by now, all of this year's young are still in 🇳🇱 and may not leave till Sept. #ornithology www.globalflywaynetwork.org/tracks/speci...

Have been looking back at some of the pics I took at Bempton & Flamborough Head earlier this seabird season. Always a special experience watching #NorthernGannets diving into the sea at up to 60mph with their air sacs that cushion the impact. #gannet #seabird #seabirds #wildlifephotography

The importance of citizen science in #ecology will not only increase with technological advances, but also because of cuts to federally-funded research. 🌎🧪

In our new perspective in PNAS we call for a move away from conservation focused on saving individual species to focusing on ecological processes, which underpin ecosystem resilience and the capacity to adapt to environmental change. Led by @josephtobias.bsky.social 🌍🌐🧪 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

NIOO is looking for a #postdoctoral researcher for #research in the context of international adaptive management of geese. Did you analyse animal movement patterns during your PhD? Do you want to work with goose transmitter data? Apply by 1 September: nioo.knaw.nl/en/vacancies... #vacancy #vacature

🚨 new research: "movement phases make a difference in habitat selection: Iberian lynx diversity of responses to human-modified landscapes" 📝 read the full paper here: buff.ly/T24zHuT @santiagosaura.bsky.social @pabcis.bsky.social @aitorgaston.bsky.social

Shorebirds stay for an extra 3-4 days in the Yellow Sea during spring migration as a lack of suitable roosts increases energy consumption, finds a new study 📈🌏🧪 Calls to protect tideland & nearby roosts 🐦 🔗 doi.org/10.1111/1365...

Immersion patterns alone can predict vessel following by albatrosses 📊🧪 Albatrosses show distinct landing and takeoff patterns when following fishing vessels. Even when vessel data are lacking, these patterns can predict vessel following 🦅🌎 🔗 doi.org/10.1111/1365...