Tessera

Back to Farmoor this evening, where yesterday's 3 Dunlin had been joined by a super adult Little Stint. Feeding very actively, and as so often here, allowing exceptionally close views.

Adult Little Stint at Farmoor, Oxfordshire, 29 July 2026. Bird is standing in the midst of turbulent water breaking on the reservoir bank.

Adult Little Stint with 3 Dunlin at Farmoor, Oxfordshire, 29 July 2026. Bird is standing in the midst of turbulent water breaking on the reservoir bank to the right, with the three Dunlins (from left, adult, juvenile, adult) a little further back.

Adult Little Stint at Farmoor, Oxfordshire, 29 July 2026. Close-up of the bird's head, neck and upper body as it probes in shallow water with its slender, slightly decurved, black bill.

Temperature profile from the meteorological station on roof of Oxford Physics this year (eodg.atm.ox.ac.uk/eodg/weather...) - really feels like a phase change in mid May - average daily temperature before & since have hardly overlapped. Currently heading into our *fourth* >30 C period this year

Jeff Groh@jeffgroh.bsky.social · last wk.

Really remarkable plant sex allocation study here: hermaphroditic avocado plants alternate sex roles twice daily and hence generate balanced sex allocation- controlled by ancient trans-species polymorphism. Heard a bit about this jaw-dropping work at UC Davis last year - great to see it out!

Avocados come in 2 varieties - A-types start each day female and switch to male midday. B-types do the reverse. In work just published from the last chapter of my PhD, we show this system evolved 40+million yrs ago and is regulated by alleles of 1 transcription factor www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Lovely fresh juvenile Dunlin at Farmoor this evening - wonder where this hatched? Autumn wader season well underway.

Quite sad about this - someone with so much talent and the author of surely the funniest ever book about birding, including this classic account of seawatch dialogue, surely recognisable to anyone www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio... Bill Oddie, naturalist and broadcaster, dies aged 85

Text from Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book (1980) describing dialogue during a seawatch:

"Diver!" "Where??" "Flying west." "Which is west?" "Right." "So it's flying left to right?" "Yes." "How far out?" "I daren't take my telescope off it." "Try to pin point it." "Can you see the boat?" "There's hundreds of boats!" "A red boat." "Yes. A big red boat?" "No. A little red boat." "A little red boat, with a green sail?" "Yes." "I've got that." "Well it's gone passed that." "How far past?" "Have you still got the boat?" "The little red one?" "With a green sail?" "Yes." "OK, come past that... keep going right and you'll see a kittiwake." "On the water ,or flying?" "On the water." "There's fifty kittiwakes on the water!" "OK, second kittiwake from the left." "That's a Common Gull." "No; next to the Common Gull." "OK. I've got it. A Kittiwake, next to a Common Gull." "Right, now, go eleven o'clock from that, and you'll see a buoy." "I can't see a buoy." "Eleven o'clock from the kittiwake. A small boy- swimming." "That's not a boy. It's a girl!" "Oh yes. And she's not swimming. She's drowning!" "Never mind that, have you got her?" "Yes." "Right then. Count one... two, three...er...ten,eleven....twelve...twenty-five,twenty six,twenty-seven...er,er....thirty three, thirty four,thirty-five waves to the right, and there's a bit of drift wood, with a Great Northern Diver flying over it..... Now!" "Er.... I've got the boat!"

Ben Sheldon @sheldonbirds.bsky.social · 2w ago

Popped down to Churn on the Berks/Oxon downs this evening; thrilled to see the lingering 1st-summer male Montagu's Harrier (hatched in UK in 2025) come in over the ridge for a fly-around in the last bit of daylight. Superb to watch the bird in the landscape & hope they might one day recolonise here.

Montagu's Harrier silhouetted against the evening sky on the Berkshire Downs

First summer male Montagu's Harrier over stubble field. The bird is ash-grey with chestnut streaks on a paler breast and belly and black wing feathers also visible.

Does summer 2026 in Europe feel unusual so far in terms of heat? Well - that’s because it is. Statistically ridiculous outlier

Met4Cast@met4cast.net · 2w ago

Are things supposed to spill outside of bell curves? The temperature anomaly this summer across Europe is nothing short of exceptional. I still feel that we’ve seen a step change in our climate over the last decade.

Ben Sheldon @sheldonbirds.bsky.social · 2w ago

Some new thinking about a fundamental model to help us understand when and when not to expect trade-offs between life history traits at the phenotypic level

Krish Sanghvi@krishsanghvi11.bsky.social · 2w ago

We refine & extend the Y-model heuristic (“mean invariance” hypothesis) to explain why resource limitation reveals tradeoffs + suggestions for what empiricists should measure (hint: it’s not average resource availability in a population, or solely variation in acquisition-allocation). Now in JEB

Ben Sheldon @sheldonbirds.bsky.social · 2w ago

Quite a surprise this morning when this Long-tailed Shrike was refound nearby in Gloucestershire - only the 3rd British record. Feeding actively on large insects caught by sallying down to the ground. Very close (~200m west) to the Oxfordshire border - will it cross over?!

Long-tailed Shrike perched against sky in a Blackthorn

Financial Times@financialtimes.com · 3w ago

Just when you think the decline of the US Presidency under Trump has reached its nadir, something comes along to reveal we're a long way from the bottom...

Trump Media to sell high-speed access to president’s social media posts ft.trib.al/bn8Ovgz

Delighted to see Daisy Abrahams - DPhil student with Josh Firth & me recognised for her exceptional teaching here. Graduate students make a really important contribution to research and teaching MPLS Division honours teaching excellence with 2026 awards www.mpls.ox.ac.uk/latest/news/...

MPLS Division honours teaching excellence with 2026 awards

The Mathematical, Physical, and Life Sciences (MPLS) Division announces the five recipients of this year’s Teaching Awards, recognising their significant contributions to student learning and academic...

mpls.ox.ac.uk

Dan Harris@roostweather.bsky.social · 3w ago

Day 10 of the current heatwave in Oxford - and the third since late May. Seemingly continuing for at least a week more. Exceptionally grim - at least the nights are a bit cooler just now

Plot of temperatures from the meteorological station on the roof of Oxford Physics dept for the 60 days leading up to 13 July. Black line shows average with coloured bands showing the daily variation. Three major peaks well above 30 C - one in late May, one in late June, and current one.

Latest #UK and #ROI #heatwave map after today's (13th Jul) max #temperatures. Map shows no. of consecutive days the heatwave threshold has been reached. When this occurs for 3 (UK) / 5 (ROI) days or more, it's a heatwave. https://www.roostweather.com/ukobs/heatwave_map.php?date=2026-07-13

Alexander Lees @alexanderlees.bsky.social · 3w ago

Space tastes of Raspberry Jam?! A pleasing, no doubt temporary, diversion from events closer to home. www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

Space jam: astronomers detect ‘raspberry sugar’ on dust cloud in Milky Way

Detection of erythrulose shows compounds that are key to life can form in expanse between stars

theguardian.com

Our new commentary rdcu.be/ftx6h in @natecoevo.nature.com written with folks from @inaturalist.bsky.social and @cornellbirds.bsky.social shows that use of AI to manipulate existing or create new wildlife images undermines the huge value of vast citizen science databases. 🌍🪰🪶 #Ornithology 🧵 1/10

Citizen science platforms must mitigate against the threat of generative AI

Nature Ecology & Evolution - Citizen science platforms must mitigate against the threat of generative AI

rdcu.be

Stephen Curry @scurry.bsky.social · 4w ago

Bloody hell Germany. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Scientists fight back against far-right plans to restrict academic freedom in Germany

With the far-right Alternative for Germany leading in polls for national and state elections, institutions are facing up to proposed restrictions on academic freedom.

nature.com

Nice day out in West Wales today. Stonechat, Chough and a funny little blue heron

Male Stonechat with food for recently fledged young

Adult Red-billed Chough feeding on short coastal headland grass

Western Reef-Heron, adult in flight, Gann Estuary, Pembrokeshire 2 July 2026

Suvi Ruuskanen@suviruuskanen.bsky.social · last mo.

Go @eloisenewman.bsky.social!

#ExE2026 Eloise Newman showing cool analysis on social networks across taxa

Edward Grey Institute@egioxford.bsky.social · last mo.

Half a dozen talks & posters by members of my group at the inaugural #ExE2026 conference this week - sorry to be missing this new meeting as looks excellent

Strong EGI team at #ExE2026 this wk: @devisatarkar.bsky.social on climate extremes @davididiaquez.bsky.social on mass change @celestineadelmant.bsky.social on phenology drivers, Hannah on number-quality trade-off @rona-learmonth.bsky.social on plasticity & carry-over effects & Lucy on spatial scales

MetJam@metjam.co.uk · last mo.

Dramatic illustration of the exceptional nature of the June 2026 heatwave - using the 250yr Central England Temp record, yesterday was +3.3 C above previous highest daily mean temperature for June. Exceptional heat day and night

A daily mean of 26.5°C for Central England Temperature yesterday (26th June) is the second highest on record in the temperature series, sitting 1.6°C below the all-time high of 28.1°C seen on the 19th of July 2022. Unprecedented June heat in a series that dates to the 1770s.

Spaghetti chart showing Central England Temperature (CET) daily mean values for every day of the year from 1772 to 2026. Faint grey lines trace 254 years of historical data, forming a seasonal cycle from around 2°C in winter to a summer peak of roughly 18°C. A dashed red horizontal line marks the all-time CET daily mean record of 28.1°C, set on 19 July 2022. A dashed amber horizontal line marks the previous June daily mean record of 23.2°C, set on 19 June 2005. A thick red line shows 2026's observed daily means, climbing sharply in the second half of June, well above the entire historical envelope at that point in the year. A large bold number, '26.5°C', sits near the top of the chart, connected by an arrow to the peak of the red line on 26 June 2026. Two subtitle blocks state that this is the highest CET daily mean ever recorded for any June day since 1772, beating the previous record by 3.3 degrees Celsius, and that it is the second hottest CET daily mean on record overall, behind only the 2022 reading. A UK outline inset in the lower half of the chart shows a shaded triangle connecting the three reference stations that define the Central England Temperature series: Stonyhurst in Lancashire, Pershore College in Worcestershire, and Rothamsted in Hertfordshire.

Just as the heatwave starting to break in Oxford, this adult Temminck's Stint was a surprise find by Andy Last this evening along the causeway at Farmoor: a brief stop before flying off high to the East just before sunset

Live meteorological data from the roof of @oxfordphysics.bsky.social has been a very useful site this past week - really captures the brutal overnight heat, and particularly this morning where 28˚C already by 9am (times on fig are GMT) eodg.atm.ox.ac.uk/eodg/weather...