A remarkable trio of wintering species in my yard today - an Ovenbird, Baltimore Oriole (one of 16 visiting my feeders!) and a Rufous Hummingbird. While the latter two species have been increasingly observed locally in recent winters, the Ovenbird is a 1st January record for North Georgia.

Nice write-up of our efforts to document and prevent bird collisions with windows on the UGA campus. ecology.uga.edu/project-maca...

Project MACAW aims to reduce bird-building collisions on UGA’s campus - Odum School of Ecology

Richard Hall leads a team of students identifying hotspots for lethal bird collisions.

ecology.uga.edu

Had a wonderful time at #BES2025 in lovely Edinburgh. Nice to finally meet the J. Anim. Ecol editorial board, & catch up with colleagues old and new in movement, disease & invasion ecology. Shout-out to Matt Silk for taking me birding at Portobello - Long-tailed Ducks put on a show!

Neotropical warbler season is over but I was charmed by the frenetic bathing of this Swamp Sparrow today, a less than annual visitor to my yard

With all of the horrors 2025 has brought I haven't had much enthusiasm to engage with this platform, but warblers help make the world a little bit better, so thought I would share some warbler joy from a few days ago at my backyard birdbath in Athens GA. Migration is amazing!

🪶 Today, more than 1/3 of the federal grant $$ we were relying on to finance our science & conservation work in 2025 is paused w/ no indication of when, or if, we will be able to access it again. Your tax-deductible donation helps us weather this period of uncertainty. birdpop.org/pages/do... 1/2

For the past 3 days I've been hosting Georgia's 2nd ever Hooded Oriole in my yard - it showed up right after last weekend's storms from the west. Since then almost 80 people have showed up to admire it. Amidst all the turmoil & bad news it's been nice to share a slice of joy with Georgia birders!

Some much needed bird therapy - the huge blackbird/ cowbird/ grackle/ starling roost in a bamboo patch in west Athens. The wheeling flocks were occasionally thrown into disarray by a marauding Cooper's Hawk.

Rare in winter this far north, a Lincoln's Sparrow is overwintering along the N Oconee River Greenway in Athens, highlighting the value of this urban corridor. The video includes comparison with lookalike Song Sparrow in foreground (note fine streaks, slender body & bill, & buffy malar of Lincoln's)

It's the year of the Great Northern Diver! It's always to joy to see these birds staging in Athens in late March on their northbound migration. Overnight rains can sometimes result in 50+ birds in breeding attire, giving their haunting yodelling calls.

cool paper alert! flower mites use hummingbirds as taxis to move from flower to flower ok, super cool, but how do they quickly jump onto this taxi? turns out they sense the hummingbird's electric field and use electrostatic attraction to hop on! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Some local birding cheer - a female Rufous Hummingbird has showed up at a friend's feeder following the recent cold snap. As more Neotropical birds attempt to overwinter in temperate regions, cold snaps may well lead to more mid-winter displacements of migrants.

The frigid for Georgia 18F/-8C temperatures brought a sprinkling of ducks to Lake Herrick on the UGA campus, most notably a pair of American Wigeon. Supporting cast included 5 Redheads, 3 Hooded Mergansers and a Ruddy Duck.

Added to the top of my reading list: analysis of nocturnal flight calls of migrants suggests interspecies communication! Social associations across species during nocturnal bird migration: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...

Social associations across species during nocturnal bird migration

Songbirds have long been thought to undertake migration independently. Van Doren et al. find that songbirds associate with other species during migratory flights, connections that may be maintained by...

cell.com

Asst. Prof Quantitative Insect Ecologist in University of Georgia's Entomology Dept! Great folks at UGA working on insects in this and other units. www.ugajobsearch.com/postings/406...

Birds connect places! Using movements of >10K inds of a migratory shorebird, quantified site<->site connectivity across a flyway. Identified 49 highly connected sites 🐦 But, many are unprotected. Considering connectivity improves conservation for migratory species 🌎 🧪 🔗 doi.org/10.1111/1365...

20 years on from the start of a novel avian disease epidemic that has led to catastrophic population declines in several UK species we are finally getting some significant movement on advice regarding bird feeding www.theguardian.com/environment/... 1/2 #Ornithology #UKbirding

RSPB stops selling flat bird feeders owing to deadly finch disease

Feeding birds from flat surfaces such as tables could be contributing to spread of finch trichomonosis, says charity

theguardian.com

New paper out in @rsocpublishing.bsky.social! Research from our group shows that males of the polygynous ruff visit many potential breeding sites within a breeding season, travelling up to 9000 km and visiting up to 23 different sites! royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... 1/7

One of the last birds I saw in the UK before moving to Athens, GA. Now I have a flock of them wintering in my yard!

Steph' Thorpe@stephbirdart.bsky.social · 2y ago

Bit of video of another brilliant bird from this week in history. A male Baltimore Oriole in Oxfordshire on 17th December 2003. #birds #UKbirding #rarebirdsuk

A mugshot of a Nelson's Sparrow sitting on the boat dock during a very high tide on the St Catherines Island Christmas Bird Count.

Athens super-birder Patrick Maurice found an incredible first Clarke County record of Lapland Longspur today. Luckily I was able to re-find it this morning as my 250th bird species in Georgia's smallest county.

Another slice of migratory bird joy - more video footage of migrants that stopped by my backyard pond in Athens, GA in fall 2024. Part 2 of 2. #birds #backyardbirds

A little slice of migratory bird joy - a short montage of some of the migrants that stopped by my backyard pond in Athens, GA in fall 2024. Part 1 of 2. #birds #backyardbirds

Love birds & coffee? Want to support bird conservation, local businesses & artists? Birds Georgia, in partnership with Georgia-based coffee roaster Cafe Campesino, has launched a certified bird-friendly coffee that supports shade-grown coffee farmers & overwintering habitat for Neotropical migrants.

Just lovely views of a gorgeous Snow Bunting on Long Rock Beach, Cornwall, on Sunday plus a Brucey Bonus Bonaparte's Gull found just up the beach from us that we were able to relocate after patiently scanning through the Black-headed Gulls at the inlet. #cornwallbirds

Wonderful paper uses high-resolution tracking data to show barn swallows & house martins infected with blood parasites have smaller foraging ranges in lower-quality habitat than uninfected birds. Hopefully more such papers on movement-parasitism associations to come! www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Sick without signs. Subclinical infections reduce local movements, alter habitat selection, and cause demographic shifts - Communications Biology

Subclinical infections in wild swallows reduce foraging ranges, alter habitat use, and decrease survival rates. A study using ultra-high-resolution tracking reveals overlooked impacts of infection on ...

nature.com

RIP Slender-billed Curlew - wish I could have seen one. Let's hope we can do better by our remaining cherished curlew species.

BirdGuides@birdguides.bsky.social · 2y ago

Following a new study, it has been recommended that Slender-billed Curlew be declared extinct, putting to bed any hopes that the wader may still exist and marking the first known global bird extinction from mainland Europe: bit.ly/4hMX9qh

Northern Gannet I photographed at Noss Head, Shetland this past summer. The dark iris likely indicates that the bird survived infection by highly pathogenic avian influenza that hammered breeding colonies here in 2022. Encouraging that it's still surviving 2 years later. #seabirds

A cool new paper delves into possible mechanisms of migratory culling (where infected individuals have lower migration success). The % malaria-infected birds blown off course and predated by falcons in the Canaries was higher than in birds departing Spain for Africa. www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

Does malaria infection increase the risk of predation-related mortality during bird migration?

The migratory culling hypothesis posits that infected individuals are less likely to survive long-distance migration due to physiological and behavioral effects, but this lacks empirical evidence. Her...

cell.com

This past weekend we found 5 Black Redstarts in Lizard village, Cornwall, including this striking male fanning its rufous tail as it predated insects from the side of a building in hovering flight.