🦠 SYMPOSIUM SPOTLIGHT — S03-04 Seabird Health and Disease: Lessons from Bird Flu and Beyond Emerging diseases, climate change and global pressures are reshaping the challenges facing seabirds. Convenors: Patricia Serafini, Amandine Gamble, Jana Jeglinski & Jude Lane. bit.ly/4589Gzi #WSC4

⏰ ABSTRACT DEADLINE APPROACHING #BOU2027 | 6-8 April 2027 | Nottingham, UK & Zoom & Bluesky Avian disease ecology: combining avian ecology and OneHealth to understand and mitigate disease Submit your talk, poster or Bluesky abstract now! Deadline: 31 July bou.org.uk/event/avi... #ornithology

Are you interested in #gulls, diet metabarcoding, or both? Of course you are! Check out our new preprint where we use molecular methods to decode the (animal-based) diet of lesser black-backed gulls - arguably a species with one of the most diverse diets out there. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

bioRxiv Ecology@biorxiv-ecology.bsky.social · 3w ago

Evaluating DNA metabarcoding to characterise diet diversity and foraging strategies in a generalist mesopredator, the lesser black-backed gull (Larus fuscus) https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.17.738687v1

Delighted to see this paper finally out after a long time in the making. Huge thanks to everyone involved—and to all those long nights spent on the cliffs catching these incredible little birds. 🥳🎉 @stephen8vickers.bsky.social #seabirds #ornithology

RSPB Science@rspbscience.bsky.social · 3w ago

New research reveals a substantial decline in the number of European Storm-petrels caught by researchers over the course of a 27-year study Read on for a summary Full paper: doi.org/10.1080/0006... @one-cardiffuni.bsky.social @robthomasbirds.bsky.social @kirstyfranklin.bsky.social #seabird 🪶🧪

New paper! We simulated foraging trips of Northern gannets at Bass Rock to decipher what information individuals use to keep returning to the same foraging patches. Memory was the strongest driver, but it wasn't the whole story. 🧵👇 doi.org/10.1186/s404... 1/5

Celebrating 20yrs Rat free this year! One of the biggest successes on the island is the seabirds, but for Manx Shearwaters it has been phenomenal. One of our box birds from today, the fact we have 15,000 and they breed successfully was unthinkable 30yrs ago!

Two of the world’s largest Gannet colonies may not recover from the impact of bird flu until 2041 at the earliest, study finds Read a summary: www.rspb.org.uk/whats-happen... Full paper: doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2026.111887 #seabirds #hpai 🪶 🧪

The big news is our next International Conference will be held in Gdańsk, Poland in Sept 2027! With the lovely @kasiawojczulanis.bsky.social and team as the local hosts. It's going to be amazing! Watch for further news after the (northern) field season... #seabirds #ornithology #Seabirds2027

The Seabird Group@theseabirdgroup.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Our June 2026 newsletter has arrived in your inbox! 💌 We learn about the importance of @biosecuritylife.bsky.social and rescuing grounded shearwaters as well as celebrate 40-years of @smp-seabirds.bsky.social! Plus the usual Seabirder Spotlight, paper releases and some exciting news! 🗞️ #seabirds

Sound up! #StormPetrels just past midnight at #Mousa Broch, #Shetland. A truly special experience. Invasive predators are a big risk to colonies so kudos to @rspbscotland.bsky.social #Shetland & @biosecuritylife.bsky.social teams for the recent rat incursion response. #seabirds #superseabirdsunday

Some rare but very welcome good news about the UK’s breeding #seabirds. RSPB buys Bass Rock in the outer Firth of Forth, home to about 10,000 Puffins and 100,000 Gannets, after 300 years in private hands. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

RSPB buys Bass Rock after 300 years in private hands

The charity says the purchase is an important step in halting declining seabird numbers in the Firth of Forth.

bbc.co.uk

"Flying crosswinds slowed them down, but helped facilitate navigation and prey detection through smell.” #seabirds

Small seabirds rely on crosswinds to navigate the open ocean

Storm petrels are among the smallest and most mysterious seabirds. Until recently, the use of biologgers to track their movements was impossible. A new study published in Biology Letters reveals that ...

phys.org

Non-breeding birds form a large proportion of #seabird populations, yet they are often overlooked in research & difficult to account for in environmental assessments. A new #OWSMRF report highlights why this matters & how we can close evidence gaps 👇 jncc.gov.uk/news/new-rep... 🧵

Colony managers know it The literature ignores it! Many seabirds are young - juvenile, immature, subadult, prebreeder - and we know v little about them! Here's our paper on why you should care about young seabirds for conservation! W/ @ejgnam2.bsky.social doi.org/10.1002/fee....

Worrying news from Mousa in #Shetland with sightings of rat on the island. #Mousa is home to the largest population of European Storm Petrel in the UK, a sparrow sized ground nesting #seabird particularly vulnerable to invasive predators. @rspbscotland.bsky.social www.shetnews.co.uk/2026/04/30/w...

Warning over threat to birds after rat seen on Mousa

The uninhabited island hosts the UK’s largest breeding population of storm petrels

shetnews.co.uk

Our new research shows that HPAI increased Northern Gannet mortality by a factor of ~6 and ~4 at two of the world’s largest colonies. We predict this impact will take almost two decades to recover from. #biologicalconservation #seabirds #hpai Full paper: doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2026.111887

Newest paper just out, led by PhD student Nick James: Foraging under changing winds: behavioural responses of the black noddy Anous minutus. As you might expect, small tropical #seabirds are highly sensitive to wind speed and direction when undertaking #foraging trips. doi.org/10.3354/meps...

🥳 New paper alert 🥳 The first of the data chapters from my DPhil, and the works from my first few field seasons on Skomer, is out! "Shearwaters make efficient navigational decisions, even at very fine scales" - doi.org/10.1242/jeb.... A huge thank you to everyone involved 🩵

Shearwaters make efficient navigational decisions, even at very fine scales

Summary: A fine-scale displacement of Manx shearwaters, a wide-ranging pelagic seabird, reveals that they preferentially adopt shorter homing routes following release at proximal sites, demonstrating ...

doi.org

New research gives insight into European Storm-petrel movements and behaviour at sea. Read on for a summary Full paper: doi.org/10.3354/meps... @one-cardiffuni.bsky.social @robthomasbirds.bsky.social @meps-ir.bsky.social 🧪 🌎️ 🪶 #seabirds

Correlation bw HPAI anitbodies + iris changes in gannets. Here, uveitis in 77% of affected birds - melanin deposition and disorganisation, including loss of a distinct anterior layer of melanocytic cells and hypertrophy of melanocytes within the iris stroma 👉 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Protection of #seabirds was also strengthened at #CMSCOP15 by listing on CMS Appendices of 23 species of gadfly petrels, the most threatened group of marine birds after Albatrosses, plus Flesh-footed Shearwater, as well as Concerted Actions agreed for the latter & Antipodean Albatross. #birds 4/12

Duckling season has begun, and DucklingWatch is back for another year! Please submit your mallard brood sightings in GB to citsci.org/projects/ducklingwatch and share this post to spread the word 🦆

We’re pleased to announce the release of the 2024 Seabird Monitoring Programme report, in partnership with JNCC, in association with the RSPB. Click here to read the report: www.bto.org/our-work/sci... Read on for key findings ⬇️ #seabirds @btobirds.bsky.social @jncc.bsky.social @rspb.bsky.social

Delighted to see our paper out today in Proceedings B @royalsocietypublishing.org! We investigated how kittiwakes adapt their activity patterns across latitudes in response to the changing day-night cycle ☀️🌃 In short - we find that Arctic kittiwakes don't have bedtimes.. doi.org/10.1098/rspb... 🧵1/4

📢 #Postdoc in #seabird #demography Capture-recapture, IPMs and PVA. Analyses underway - great stage to join the project. Hybrid/remote possible. Apply: bit.ly/3P3yAM1 Please share widely, informal email enquiries welcome @theseabirdgroup.bsky.social @worldseabirdunion.bsky.social

26 kinds of gadfly petrels are being proposed for listing under CMS at #CMSCOP15. These birds are already threatened or near threatened, they move across 64 countries & territories and face serious pressures both on land and at sea. Read the proposal in EN, SP or FR: www.cms.int/document/302...

I’m fascinated by Black-winged petrels. On Phillip Is, off Norfolk, they over-fly all day with concentrations near sunset. 1,000s of birds into the distance, calling and chasing. In 1967, the 1st nests were discovered. 60 years of unimpeded population growth. Over 20,000 pairs. Just inspiring.

Puffins from the Shiant Isles are having a tough winter of it with an almost unprecedented 'wreck' on European coasts.

Bonnet-Lebrun et al. Post-breeding season behaviour of a threatened population of subtropical brown skuas link.springer.com/article/10.1... #ornithology #seabirds #teamskua

Post-breeding season behaviour of a threatened population of subtropical brown skuas - Marine Biology

Marine Biology - There is a wide variability in seabirds migratory strategies, not only across species, but also among populations of the same species, within populations, and even within...

link.springer.com

New paper: Most birds use day–night cycles to time activity - but how do Arctic birds cope with nonstop summer light? Male snow buntings keep a daily rhythm year-round, though it weakens during spring migration as flights are scheduled more flexibly ➡️ vist.ly/4rfdw #ornithology #birds 🪶

In this work led by Josh Wilson, we labelled 4824 drone-based images containing 49990 birds from 101 species and trained a bird detection and ID model. The model achieved precision = 0.91 for detection & 0.65 for species/age/sex classification. zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Big Bird: A global dataset of birds in drone imagery annotated to species level

Drones are a valuable tool for surveying birds, but manually detecting and identifying birds in drone images is costly. We assembled a diverse dataset of 23 865 images of birds captured with 21 diffe...

zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com