Happy #SuperSeabirdSunday ! Gannets, RSPB Bempton, on Friday 31 July. Seen with @richard013.bsky.social #UKBirding
Julie Dickson
@jd2711.bsky.social
Birding, Nature, Photography, some Video Gaming. Day job = legal philosophy academic. From 🏴 now in Oxford. 1st generation Uni.
Happy #SuperSeabirdSunday ! Puffin, Inner Farne, Tuesday 28th July. Seen with @richard013.bsky.social #UKBirding
Happy #SuperSeabirdSunday ! Gannet, RSPB Bempton, on Friday 31 July. Seen with @richard013.bsky.social #UKBirding
It might not look much but this young Guillemot (aged just 20-21 days old) has jumped off its cliff ledge home and is now following dad out 60 miles. The chick will rely on father for next 6-8 weeks. Remarkable start.
Fulmar chicks have been hatching over the island in the last few weeks and you can just see this youngster peeking its head out. It’ll be early September before it fledges.
Welcome to Super Seabird Sunday where we ask you to share photos, videos & artwork of seabirds. Here is my contribution, thousands of Gannet’s off the Bass Rock. A remarkable sight. #SuperSeabirdSunday
Common blue (we think!) butterfly, seen last weekend with @richard013.bsky.social at Rushbeds meadow.
Yesterday's harvest time* walk around the local patch. Highlight was the four Oystercatchers that flew past me, calling loudly, as I overlooked Crose Mere from the site of the Bronze Age settlement, and another calling Quail. *Reckoned to be three weeks early by two local farmers.
So lovely to see swifts overhead tonight at a pub in Kidlington, Oxfordshire. #UKBirding @rspb.bsky.social @rspbengland.bsky.social ❤️💜🩷 with @richard013.bsky.social
What's happening at the University of Exeter is a disaster for both the region and the country. The way the sector is set up, it is *inevitable* and *unstoppable* that this will continuously happen everywhere. We need to stop, get out a blank sheet of paper and start again.
The cuts at Exeter University won't work. They never work. The high-ups will be back for more in a year or two, then even more a year or two after that. Unis just keep doing the same thing consultants tell them to do, over and over again. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
University of Exeter in talks to cut about 150 members of staff
The university says it is consulting with colleagues over "limited and specific potential changes".
bbc.co.uk
I've said and done all I can on universities. It was obvious all along what would happen, right down to the year and the order of the dominoes. Without big policy changes the next two to four years are utterly predictable as well. Sorry to all colleagues and students it's working out this way.
📣 People are understandably up in the arms about this (it is horrible). But just want to wave a hand out there 👋 as we're going through the same thing in Humanities at Northumbria (1 out of 5 staff need to go by end of July). 1/?
Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · last mo.'About 150 academic roles are set to go at the south-west institution, which said it was targeting areas that are “no longer sustainable” or have seen changes in student demand.' History and English are name-checked. 1/3
The nadir of 30 years of relentless monetisation of education.
This is one of the dumbest and saddest things I've ever seen. We should not think of universities in this way, and if we do that'll destroy everything that is both useful and good about them. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Find out which university degrees could earn you most across your lifetime
New data suggests which university degrees have the highest and lowest financial returns over a lifetime.
bbc.co.uk
Couldn't agree more with this. Priorities are so skewed in so many academic institutions. Particularly awful for those early career scholars coming through after us. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Stefan Collini · Squadrons of Pigs: Bonfire of the Universities
The problems with Britain’s universities are systemic and deep-rooted, not just local or contingent. Yet political and...
lrb.co.uk
A vanity project turned into a money pit at Nottingham University Staff pay the price Those at the top? CBEs, not consequences. Those who didn't understand "listed building" status have moved upward This tells you everything about UK Higher Education timeshighereducation.com/news/careers...
Universities of Sheffield, Nottingham & Edinburgh have all run into costly IT failures in Human Resources Same pattern every time: consultants/audit companies push “professionalised” HR systems, universities buy in & results are poor Money flows out far more easily than accountability flows back
Voice of Victim "At universities, typical manner in which senior management addresses an academic is one of extreme haughtiness Inconceivable to them that any academic might know how to solve problem which needs 'seven-figure sum' consultants Like whether a costly IT project is good value"
Beautiful Demoiselle damselfly at RSPB Otmoor near Oxford today.
Curlew at RSPB Otmoor @rspbengland.bsky.social @rspb.bsky.social near Oxford. With @richard013.bsky.social #UKBirding
Curlews at RSPB Otmoor @rspbengland.bsky.social @rspb.bsky.social near Oxford. With @richard013.bsky.social #UKBirding
Lovely views of marsh harriers over RSPB Otmoor, @rspb.bsky.social @rspbengland.bsky.social near Oxford, today. With @richard013.bsky.social #UKBirding
Lovely views of marsh harriers over RSPB Otmoor, @rspb.bsky.social @rspbengland.bsky.social near Oxford, today. With @richard013.bsky.social #UKBirding
Think this is called a "beautiful demoiselle" damselfly and it's a female. Seen at Adderbury Lakes, Oxfordshire on a very very warm day today, on a walk with @richard013.bsky.social
However, this shag, sat right on the cliff edge, with its glossy black iridescent feathers and bright yellow mouth, was perhaps the most beautiful bird I saw today.
