lovely piece by the lovely helen pilcher about the lovely critters that are moths. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

A great new Neotropical Birding (#38) has just arrived, a combination of dependably high quality staples with wonderful feature articles that really push the frontiers. Please read and support or join! Well done again @jameslowenwild.bsky.social @neobirdconserve.bsky.social! #ornithology

New species of leaf warbler from Japan, the Tokara leaf warbler (Phylloscopus tokaraensis): academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar... 🪶🧪 (📷 @peralstrom.bsky.social in Saitoh et al.)

How the British state views financial compensation. £75k for victims of the Post Office scandal versus £75k for disgraced friend of Jeffrey Epstein: Peter Mandelson. Via #PrivateEye

Fieldwork beginning, but my 'Shorebird Conservation in Venezuela' T-shirts—a gift from Sandra Giner years ago—are full of holes. If we want shorebirds, conservation funders should be dramatically increasing finance for Venezuela, not cutting it. Don't punish researchers! #ornithology

Cheers to everyone who delayed fossil fuel phaseout by saying "you can't switch off fossil fuels overnight" Because thanks to them everyone now has to face a situation where fossil fuels are switched off overnight 🙃🙃🙃

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026... Pentagon tells lawmakers Iran war costs top $11.3bn in 6 days. For perspective, 3 days of war costs the same as a year’s effort for the UK to reach Net Zero by 2050. If the war lasts for c.48 days, at current costs, that’s the entire UK investment needed.

This is from 1975.

Are there any other kinds of entrance?

FT comments section this morning - saying what everyone else is thinking, right?

First confirmed cases of High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza Virus (HPAIV) on Gough Island represent one of the most geographically isolated detections of HPAIV to date. But how did it get there? Read on for a summary Full paper: doi.org/10.1080/2222... 🧪🪶🌍 #seabirds

Great thread here from Ashley on two striking Black Brant hybrids that are on the Norfolk coast at the moment. As Ash mentions, true Black Brants seems destined to become a BBRC rarity in the not too distant future. This is well worth a read 👇 #birdID #ukbirding #rarebirdsuk

(1/) Grey Partridge can be a difficult species to find in many parts of the UK nowadays. This species is closely associated with arable farmland and hay meadows. It declined by 92% across the UK between 1967 and 2023. @btobirds.bsky.social JNCC RSPB Science #Ornithology

Today I have: 1. heard 3 reed buntings in full song; 2. heard my first yellowhammer in full song; 3. seen my first pair of long-tailed tits away from the flock, shiftily pretending not to be prospecting for nest sites. We’ve got this, people. Spring is just round the corner.

Know your birds, courtesy of naturalengland.

This is my go-to paper to point out that significant long-distance trade in wildlife is an ancient phenomenon- here macaws were traded from AD 700 from Meso into North America. Advocates of reintroductions of charismatic species based on sparse remains often conveniently overlook the role of trade.

I've worked and lived in Latin America for most of my life, a region for which many Brits & UK media blithely employ the term 'corruption' while accepting the endemic scourge of cronyism as somehow normal—at best 'the old boys' network', at worst 'sleaze'. Let's call 'The Honours System' what it is.

I visited the site of the only Roman Circus known in UK at Colchester for the second time today, and was even more delighted with the museum and brilliant volunteers than the first time.

Happy birthday to one of my favourite haters, Charles Darwin

You can now follow us on Instagram as well as Bluesky. Same user name - @neobirdconserve to keep things simple. Have a look at www.neotropicalbirdingandconservation.org for details of membership, publications and Conservation Awards Programme.

Incredible self own for the US. The damage being done to the US scientific enterprise is generational. We will look back on this as a tipping point where the US chose all on its own to stop leading the world in science. www.science.org/content/arti...

The question isn't how we save ourselves from Reform. It's how we save ourselves from Labour.

Just a few days to go until our next deadline. Apply at the link below. #ornithology

Our favorite Short-tailed albatross pair on Midway, George and Geraldine! #Birds George, banded in Japan, has visited Midway since 2006. Geraldine, also banded in Japan, first appeared in 2012. They first paired up and began breeding at Midway in 2018/2019, fledging their first chick in 2019.

Board of Peace - Season 1

This is insane. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

Just published: a cross-taxon synthesis of how #non-native species spread: from dispersal and #invasion fronts to Allee effects, human pathways, and predictive models. Understanding spread is key to management & policy. 👉 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... #bioinvasions #InvasiveSpecies 🧪🌍🌐

Unbelievable that lead #fishing weights are still driving wildlife declines decades after we understood the threat #Ornithology

Very sad that I felt I had no choice but to resign from The Infinite Monkey Cage - a victory for the transphobes and other bigots - I did it because so much of the media has chosen to believe the kind and empathetic people are a fiction - they are real and so often unrepresented.

Thanks to Accent Design for the work and BWWC Foundation for the funding, we have a new website. If you care about the birds of the Neotropics, have a look at neotropicalbirdingandconservation.org Join to get our journals and support conservation across the region. #birdsmatter #neotropicalbirding

The Blue-eyed Ground Dove has been confirmed as the only living member of the ancient genus Oxypelia. New genetic evidence reveals its deep evolutionary roots and the urgency of conserving its Cerrado refuge. theornithologist.org/a-lost-dove-... #TheOrnithologist #Ornithology

A grim read - Lesser Kestrels at the 1000-pair colony in Matera, Italy suffering large losses (65%) as a result of climate-induced heatwaves. For every 10 chicks, the heat killed 7. Not sure how they will adapt to that… www.lifefalkon.eu/en/news/the-...

Bachman's Warbler was discovered by the Reverend John Bachman in 1832 on the Edisto River a few miles north of Jacksonborough, South Carolina. In 1833 John J. Audubon painted and named the species after his friend Bachman. The photograph from 1958 is one of the last observations before extinction.

Where we were in October '22 with a pond suffocated by Crassula & Parrot's Feather & where we are today after 3 years' work! @themarshtit.bsky.social @ajaytegala.bsky.social @bramblebotanist.bsky.social @avalanchechris.bsky.social @steffanaquarone.bsky.social @robertbohan.bsky.social

Overshooting 1.5°C wasn't 'inevitable.' We've been pushed by fossil fuel giants & governments that pander to them. Every delay, every oil field, every broken promise made this crisis worse. Keir Starmer, will you promise to leave Rosebank undeveloped? www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Suspect these won't be the last judging by the volume of passage in Europe...

"Look, we all respect the right to protest, but you need to do it in a much more easily ignored and minimally effective way."

An astonishing 20 Clancy’s Rustic in last night’s Norwich garden moth trap, double the previous record set earlier this month (which was remarkable enough to merit a tweet). Here are some of them. #NorfolkMoths

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.

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 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/...

thanks to @josbarlow.bsky.social for sharing this

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

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...

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?

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

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