Early Sunday morning worship on Waigeo. Best bird in the world? Certainly one of the most incredible to watch.

My lifelong Paradisaeidae drought comes to a welcome end. A pilgrimage to West Papua starts out with twelve-wired bird-of-paradise (!)

Visited the coast near Fuzhou to look for Chinese Crested Tern. Hit the jackpot at high tide. Maybe only a couple hundred of these surviving: one of the world’s rarest birds

Oroanassa magnifica - White-eared Night-heron. Incredible views after a long nocturnal search on a beautiful warm night in Fujian, China. Life is good!

Clacking wing bones together to woo mates Male scissor-tailed nightjars create abrupt sounds by hitting the bones in their wings together High-speed infrared video analysis of sonations in the scissor-tailed nightjar Hydropsalis torquata🧪 nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

We are hiring a curator for the ornithology section at the @leibnizlib.bsky.social in Hamburg. Please apply or share: www.leibniz-gemeinschaft.de/en/careers/j...

Ramphocoris clotbey. The world's best lark. Don't care what anyone says. Dipped it in 3 different countries, the first after a high speed dash across the Negev with Hadoram Shirihai 38 years ago. Finally caught up with it on the Tagdilt Track in Morocco this week. Blazing views. Joy of joys.

Happy to see my PhD work on birdsong complexity published today! doi.org/10.1098/rspb... 🐦‍⬛ 🎶 ⬇️ Why are some birdsongs simple and some extremely complex? The answer is long thought to be ‘sexual selection favouring complex signals’. But - really?

Song complexity in suboscine birds: evolutionary drivers and ecological constraints

Abstract. Acoustic signal complexity varies widely in animals, from single notes to highly sophisticated vocal displays. In birds, vocal complexity can evo

doi.org

This "Picture of top 15 Indian Birds" shows 27 AI-freaks that don't exist. What is this crap!? The journal – Academia Biology – seems like a great addition to the proliferation of science journals. Will publish anything for 2000 USD. 🤨

🚨🚨Job Alert 🦇🚨🚨 Come to join my group! We are looking for a postdoctoral researcher with expertise in population genomics and bioinformatics to work on the UK serotine bats and Lyssavirus transmission project with APHA. 18 months project based @exeter.ac.uk 🦇🧪🌍🌐🧬 jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecr...

Mildly bonkers. The colourful face and wattles of the cassowary don’t reflect ultraviolet, but the casque does!

Dr. Todd L. Green@thecassowarykid.bsky.social · 4mo ago

🚨NEW SCIENCE ALERT!🚨Read our new, open-access publication in Scientific Reports (@nature.com) describing #biofluorescence in #cassowary casques! Very excited to unveil this after keeping it secret for 5 years⬇️ www.nature.com/articles/s41... NYITCOM @akiopteryx.bsky.social @jonathanberman.bsky.social

X in meltdown over bird-related misinformation again. Some of it seeping to bsky. Apparently this viral video shows the crows all leaving Tel Aviv, an omen of imminent doom. Only thing is they are not crows but storks. Maybe some raptors. On their annual spectacular migration north to breed.

Ida B Wells' Winchester Rifle@dytsras.bsky.social · 4mo ago

The thing about fateful days is that they always catch you by surprise, but in hindsight you see that all the signs were there In completely unrelated news, here's an extremely large murder of crows flying over Tel Aviv

Pains me to say it as I know many researchers and companies are developing or adopting acoustic indices, but I agree with this critique. Soundscapes are a waste of time and funding. We should ditch them and focus attention on improving species identification via acoustic monitoring. 🧪🪶🌍🌐

Markus Eichhorn@markuseichhorn.bsky.social · 4mo ago

There are no shortcuts in biodiversity monitoring. Acoustic sensors for individual species: great. Acoustic indices as biodiversity indicators: trash. New paper by Sugai et al. 🧪🌍🌐

Years ago (2006) I photographed a female Bare-necked Fruitcrow in Amazonian Peru. I assumed it was building a nest with mycelial cords (rhizomorphs) of what looks like Brunneocorticium corynecarpon (a crust fungus). But I never saw the nest, until today... 1/5 macaulaylibrary.org/asset/623557...

ML623557099 - Bare-necked Fruitcrow - Macaulay Library

Macaulay Library ML623557099; © Joseph Tobias; Madre de Dios, Peru

macaulaylibrary.org

🚨 Bulbul project update: we are now measuring specimens in several collections in Asia, Europe and USA. The data will be used in a family-wide analysis of intraspecific variation and are destined for the next global dataset release (AVONET 2.0). If you want to join the project, get in touch. 🪶🌐🌎🧪

Joseph Tobias@josephtobias.bsky.social · 6mo ago

🚨 For those with access to collections of bird specimens: we are looking for collaborators who can quickly measure bulbuls/greenbuls (Pycnonotidae) for a project on intraspecific trait variation. We need 100s specimens measured from common species in return for co-authorship. Anyone up for it? 🧪🌐🪶

🦜🏔️ How did vibrant Amazonian parrot feathers end up in a desert tomb on the Pacific coast of Peru 1,000 years ago? Our new paper on @natcomms.nature.com reveals they didn't just trade feathers, pre-Inca societies transported live macaws and parrots across the Andes!👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Ancient DNA and spatial modeling reveal a pre-Inca trans-Andean parrot trade - Nature Communications

Here, the authors combine ancient DNA, stable isotopes, and computational modeling to study colorful feathers from a pre-Incan tomb in Peru. They identify four species of parrots, which were likely ca...

nature.com

Excited to see this analysis based on AVONET & AVOTREX bird trait data. Do bird radiations tend to avoid regions of trait space already occupied by other lineages? This analysis suggests the answer is yes! The "Birds The Don't Exist" actually do exist, just in related passerine clades.

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Well damn, this is cool. Birds That Don't Exist: Niche Pre-Emption as a Constraint on Morphological Evolution in the Passeroidea | Chia et al., 2026 | Ecology Letters onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Congratulations and big respect to Ariane Dellavalle for publishing the first chapter of her thesis. 🎉 A detailed analysis of bird diversity across West African land-use gradients, raising some important questions about how we interpret biodiversity trends. 🪶🌐🧪

Ariane Dellavalle@arianedellavalle.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Space-for-time studies of land-use change rely on a baseline. But what if that baseline has already changed? In our new Ecography paper we show this can underestimate biodiversity loss. 🐦📉🧵(1/9) nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

🚨3 Lectureships in Biology 🚨 Come join us in Bristol @bristolbiosci.bsky.social! We are looking for new collegues working across a broad spectum of topics in biology, including ecology & environmental change. Get in touch if you have Qs! Apply here by 8 March: www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...

Why is there such variation in the birds encountered as you go up or down a mountain? New paper in #ScienceAdvances examines how climate and ecological interactions drive bird distributions in mountains throughout the year: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 1/10 ⬇️

Climate, ecological dynamics, and the seasonal distribution of birds in mountains

Ecological dynamics related to energy use and competition drives the seasonal distribution of birds in mountains across the world.

science.org

Chatbots offer a magnificent bribe - a fast, frictionless route to information that bypasses the discomfort of learning. In this op-ed, we describe this as a Faustian bargain, in which we trade away what it means to be human & universities trade away their value www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/comm...

Learning is complex, messy, emotional: AI can’t replicate that

ChatGPT and other AI tools may seem irresistible. But educators should beware, as they could end up trading away the thing that gives them value — the rich experience of slow learning

irishexaminer.com

🚨 For those with access to collections of bird specimens: we are looking for collaborators who can quickly measure bulbuls/greenbuls (Pycnonotidae) for a project on intraspecific trait variation. We need 100s specimens measured from common species in return for co-authorship. Anyone up for it? 🧪🌐🪶

📣 Grad student wanted PhD position in avian evolution, with emphasis on phylogenetics, macroevolution, Neotropical radiations, flight and dispersal. Based at the University of New Orleans (soon to be LSU New Orleans). Start: September 2026. Contact me if interested. claramuntlab.org

If you thought regular bird listing was for nerds, wait til you get a load of phylolisting. @snacktavish.bsky.social

Birds of the World | The Cornell Lab@birdsoftheworld.bsky.social · 6mo ago

MAJOR NEWS! We just launched an awesome new tool! The illustrated Birds of the World Phylogeny Explorer lets users trace any bird’s lineage, compare species relationships, and explore major evolutionary milestones with a click of a button. SHARE and EXPLORE! birdsoftheworld.org/bow/news/phy...

A data collection mission that began in 2012 is finally released as AVONICHE. Designed as a companion to AVONET bird trait database and updated to Avilist taxonomy, it’s an Open Access dataset providing updated diets and a detailed breakdown of foraging behaviours used by all bird species. 🪶🌐

Ferran Sayol@ferransayol.bsky.social · 7mo ago

New paper out! 🐦📊 We realease AVONICHE, a global dataset with detailed information on the proportional use of 32 foraging niches, combining dietary categories with the behaviours and substrates used to access resources. Openly access the paper and data in GEB: doi.org/10.1111/geb....

Seed dispersal by 🦜🦇 underpins rainforest recovery. We want to understand more about its timing + traits driving recovery through obs, exp + genomic data. Ready to join the @reassemblynet.bsky.social team working in Ecuadorian Chocó? Pls apply to our 4-yr PhD position @sgn.one: tinyurl.com/2pkryc99

Huge News from the Western Amazon: it's the year 2025 and we are still describing entirely new, strikingly-distinctive large-bodied bird species! Behold Tinamus resonans sp. nov. the Slaty-masked Tinamou mapress.com/zt/article/v... #Ornithology @tetzoo.bsky.social 🪶

Lovely link-up between @josephtobias.bsky.social's #Avonet and the #PredictsProject, with @nhm.org's @patrickawalkden.bsky.social among the authors

Nature@nature.com · 8mo ago

Alterations in land use are found to leave bird communities with fewer backup species for key ecological roles go.nature.com/4onlgOz

Online now: Forecasting extinction risk for future-proof conservation decisions. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Should conservation focus on threatened species? Or should we be proactive and protect species before they become threatened? This paper explores how to get the balance right.

Land-use change undermines the stability of avian functional diversity - new #OA @nature.com paper with @patrickawalkden.bsky.social @josephtobias.bsky.social, combining #PredictsProject with #Avonet doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Land-use change undermines the stability of avian functional diversity - Nature

Large-scale analyses of bird species traits reveal that land-use change reduces resilience of key ecological functions more than previously thought.

doi.org