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

Our stand at Avian Odyssey 2025 at @nhm-london.bsky.social Talk this afternoon by @liakajiki.bsky.social on Manakins - the birds, not the shop dummies.

⚠️ First Pinks of the winter alert ⚠️ Nice little flock of 19 in some soggy Humberside stubble. Welcome to the best time of the year 🥳 #humberbirds #ukbirding

If you can make it to London on September 20th, come and hear @liacanjica.bsky.social talk about manakins as part of #avianodyssey2025 at the @nhm-london.bsky.social Tickets still available via www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/... Attend in person or via livestream.

All set up at Migfest. Bring on the crowds. Join us, chat, get some books, win a prize. @spurnbirdobs.bsky.social @colnepointbirder.bsky.social @robertabirder.bsky.social

Yedterday was a mega tanager day. Tamata

It seems that two sp. of Bordered Straw in the same trap this week is not unusual. I got one each of umbra and armigera on Friday to my garden dual actinic along with 4 delicate, 2 Rush Veneer & 3 DSG Colne Point - NE Essex

The #climatecrisis means the UK is losing its avian mountaineers.

Clocking off for the w/e: starting by thumbing through an advance copy of the wonderful debut by @bsbicountries.bsky.social (James Harding-Morris), ENDEMIC, published by @chiffchat.bsky.social, which celebrates Britain's unique fauna/flora & for which I was honoured to provide a back-cover quote.

Our water bill in Devon has just come through today. It's doubled. Our town had the cryptosporidium outbreak. We've had sewage in our beaches and the river. And the CEO of South West water got a £300,000 pay rise as this was all happening, which she told me was a "cost of living increase".

How BirdLife International is making waves for seabird conservation worldwide, inc the S Pacific. My article in the Jul-Sep issue of BirdLife magazine.

Fortunate to witness an astonishing spectacle at the beach tonight: tens of thousands of (mainly Small) white butterflies pouring in over the sea, as far as you could see. Pulses of butterflies swept in-off everywhere, an extraordinary sight. @linnetincley.bsky.social @norfolknats.bsky.social 1/2

At a time of climate and nature collapse, farmers are paid subsidies to maintain all of Ireland's uplands as ecological deadzones. For what? For the production of wool that's then dumped. You could NOT make it up. www.agriland.ie/farming-news...

@migrantmothuk.bsky.social Few presumed migrants last night in my Colne Point garden, the highlight being Silver Barred, also Four-spotted Footman, a few Diamondbacks, Delicate possibly more fridge to be checked later

Another similar example - 1st Brazilian record (pending ratification) of Cape May Warbler (Setophaga tigrina) from Minas Gerais uk.inaturalist.org/observations... 🪶