What is the impact of marine infrastructure on predators? 🦭 If you want answers (and many more questions) come see me at Beaker Street Festival🧪👩‍🔬Australia's National week of science, art and culture is taking place 6th-17th August 2026 in Lutruwita/Tasmania! www.beakerstreet.com.au/roving_scien...

Heather Mathews - Beaker Street

beakerstreet.com.au

Although the GPS loggers are teaching us lots of really cool things about the members of Central Europe's last gull-billed tern colony, sometimes the news is just the saddest:

The good news just keeps coming and coming today. Look at these sensational data provided by the tracking project we have with @gullbilledterns-de.bsky.social!

Two photos that make us very happy this morning – story below. :-)

After last year’s successful pilot study, GPS-tracking @gullbilledterns-de.bsky.social's birds, we’re back at it this year. The lovely bird @harrykuipers.bsky.social photographed is L39, a 5-yr old female, breeding with 4-yr old R75 on nest 8. She laid two eggs that both hatched successfully.

The 2-year-olds have started to arrive en masse and, with 83, now make up 18% of the registered birds at the colony. At 470 of those, we are exactly 70 above the number we had this time last year. Food is looking good too, and the chicks are growing nicely. ❤️

🚨We're hiring again, this time for a research assistant position 🚨 The position is to help with a project looking at learning and social behaviour in birds along an urban gradient Position at @ceec-research.bsky.social 📆28th June deadline More info: shorturl.at/vBxiW #ringing #fieldwork

Bugging is underway, and we are missing @matteobeccardi.bsky.social who spent two seasons supplementing the team to collect data on sex- and age-specific mitochondrial functioning in the terns. His paper on this just came out in @jexpbiol.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1242/jeb....

In other lovely news: the breeding season of @gullbilledterns-de.bsky.social is well underway too and parents of the first three nests have been identified. Here are L28 and L13, last-year sweethearts, this year breeding at nest 3. More news on the blog: gelochelidon.de/home. :-)

Look who arrived as well! 147 little field assistants made their way into one of our incubators. These laboratory-bred kissing bugs will help us collect blood samples from incubating terns. Stored in a fake egg for c. 20 minutes, they collect blood, which we then gratefully collect from them.

The first eggs of the 2026 season are a fact. Four clutches were started yesterday, today we're at nine. ❤️

📣 #PhDOpportunity in Geelong, Australia Ever wondered how urbanisation affects sleep in birds? 🐦 Interested in #behaviouralecology and #biologging? Come and work with me and Kate Buchanan at @deakinuniversity.bsky.social! Applications close 31 May Details: www.deakin.edu.au/study/fees-a...

HDR Scholarship - Avian sleep in urban environments

Conduct research in in urban bird behaviour with Deakin's PhD scholarship.

deakin.edu.au

How lovely! @tcansse.bsky.social installed a camera at one of the islands that make up the Banter See colony, and so we can see that the birds have started to spend the night on site now. ❤️

Some very happy news on this Monday: over the weekend, two of our GPS-tagged gull-billed terns returned to Neufelderkoog and started uploading their data to the hub. Although the data transfer is not yet complete, both seem to have spent their winter in Guinea-Bissau.

One week in, 149 birds have been registered. Among them is 25-yr-old Roy, currently the oldest bird of the population, after most other elderly terns died during the HPAI outbreaks of 2022 and 2023.

We are looking for a full-time, permanent, animal caretaker in Wilhelmshaven. Work with songbirds & quail in an international research team: - Bird care & welfare - Breeding programs - Hand-rearing chicks - Husbandry & hygiene - Data records More info: ifv-vogelwarte.de/en/institute...

Out now in Environmental Monitoring and Assessment: a study in which we assessed whether mercury levels vary among feather types within individual terns, how feather mercury levels relate to those in blood, and whether all levels vary with sex and age in a similar way: doi.org/10.1007/s106...

Wow, after 8 birds arrived on the 12th of April, 57 more arrived on the 13th! I've not seen an 'arrival-explosion' like it. The birds seem excited about it too, wasting no time between arrival, courtship and the start of 'nest building'.

📢Fully-funded #PhD opportunity with us: 🐦 Quantifying (social) learning and social behaviour in an urbanised world 🐦 Position at @ceec-research.bsky.social 📆29th May deadline More info: tinyurl.com/yz28s96x Apply: tinyurl.com/2wpkb64y #cognition #socialbehaviour #fieldwork #birds 🙏Please Share

As an update: 6 more birds were registered by the system yesterday, such that 8 birds are known to have arrived in total, with more spotted today. Synchronous, but not early, as the first-arrival summary-graph for the years 1994-2026 shows:

Live from the field: they’re here! The first two registrations of the 2026 season are a fact and go to Calderon and Pricilla. ❤️

Among 480 (!!) birds caught by #TeamSAFRINGSénégal last night, there were 4 Banter See birds, including 5-yr old Piccolo, who prospected in 2023 and bred in 2024 and 2025, receiving a geolocator in 2025. After a quick check, he is now on his way to us! ❤️ Thanks to Bruno Portier for the photo!

A huge thank you to all organisers, volunteers, presenters, poster contributors, and participants for making #EOU26 such a great conference! 🐦 Enjoy the rest of your time in Gdańsk, and have a safe journey home—no matter how far you’re travelling!

Have any of your biologging devices ever failed? ⁉️ If so, we’d like to hear from you! 👂 Researchers at Acadia University, Nova Scotia, are investigating biologger device failure rates to help improve research practices. 🎓 The survey takes just 10 minutes to complete: forms.gle/fZW9n2dojJVB...

Anonymous survey — device failures in bird biologging studies

Purpose: We are collecting anonymous information about device failures in bird biologging research to help practitioners plan robust, ethical studies. Responses will be aggregated for a peer-reviewed ...

forms.gle

The observation huts and rat protection are up. It's beginning to look a lot like the breeding season of 2026. Thanks to yet another dreamteam this season!❤️

Pan-tropical Wedge-tailed Shearwaters are making the most of a warming climate as they establish in higher latitude sites in Eastern Australia. Penny Beaver’s MSc paper uncovers the flexibility of the species by examining two islands in subtropical and temperate sites. dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3...

Today we celebrate ‘Dress for STEM Day’, and wear purple clothes to celebrate all women in #STEM (#science, #technology, #engineering, #mathematics) and raise awareness to the underrepresentation of women in these fields.

I’m so over-the-moon happy to share that our lovely @mjgarciabianco.bsky.social, so far with us as a fellow funded by @sfb1372.bsky.social, will be able to continue her work in the common tern team as a PhD student, co-funded by ANID and the @daadworldwide.bsky.social.

📣Please share: We are looking for a field assistant to join our team in studying #ruffs on coastal meadows at Botnian Bay in Finland. The job will provide fantastic insights into lekking behaviour and provide essential skills in field ornithology. Details here www.bi.mpg.de/2790786/2512...

There are still two more weeks to apply for the PhD position on nematodes, isotopes, metals and PFAS in the terns. Don't be shy to reach out when having questions about it either. :-)

Common Tern Project@commonternproject.bsky.social · 9mo ago

There’s one month left to apply for the PhD position on interactions between contaminants and parasites in common terns, co-supervised by @alicecarravieri.bsky.social, Bernd Sures from @unidue.bsky.social and myself. You can do so here: euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/380142