Caitlin Dagg

a chubby cat sleeps blissfully on a sofa

my main takeaway from @teamswiftparrot.bsky.social’s plenary is that if my cat was a orange-bellied parrot juvenile, she’d definitely survive her first migration #AOC #AOC2025 #difficultbirds

Busting all our assumptions about sexual dimorphism, bird colour and song, Kristal Cain gets #AOC2025 off to a rollicking start!

Grateful to spend two days on the Klamath watching chinook, liberated by dam removal, return to streams from which they’d been precluded since the Titanic sank. Fish are everywhere, in numbers that stagger the mind & locations that biologists figured would take years to repopulate. Too beautiful.

my parents are visiting and we spent a few days up in the blue mountains where we could barely turn a corner without tripping over lyrebirds and crimson rosellas!

A photo of a dense garden bed with mulch, groundcover plants, native grasses, shrubs of different heights, and a couple of young eucalyptus trees. In the background, you can see a couple of two storey houses and a bright blue sky.

Melbourne’s native bird community is becoming progressively simplified, or homogenised, with greater urban development. In my recent paper, I demonstrate that more developed suburbs are home to fewer individual birds and a reduced diversity of bird species. 1/5

doi.org/10.1007/s109...

Bear Breaks Into California Zoo to Mingle With Other Bears Officials at Sequoia Park Zoo have no idea how the young bear got into the zoo and went “nose-to-nose” with the three bears there.

An employee at Sequoia Park Zoo in Northern California found a black bear who came in from the wild, introduced itself to the zoo’s bears and played with their toys, before being shown the exit.

Acoustic recognition of individuals in closed and open bird populations Passive acoustic monitoring is firmly established as an effective non-invasive technique for wildlife monitoring. The analysis of animal vocalizations…

I'm excited to share our new (in press) paper on vocal individuality and acoustic recognition. We looked at Red-tailed Black-Cockatoos, Little Penguins, Little Owls, Tree Pipits and Chiffchaffs, with promising results. #bioacoustics #vocalindividuality www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

An infographic summarizing the key findings of the paper and showing cats with birds in their mouth. T

Our team has published a new study in Avian Conservation Ecology showing that #cats kill between 19–197 million #birds each year in Canada!

In the time it has taken you to read ~3 posts (1 min) 114 birds have been killed at the paws of cats in Canada.
ace-eco.org/vol20/iss2/a...

1/4

u kiss it on the nose next question please

World’s first known butt-drag fossil trace was left by a rock hyrax in South Africa 126,000 years ago The first hyrax fossil tracks and traces ever to be discovered were identified on South Africa’s coast.

god i love science theconversation.com/worlds-first...

eight leatherbound books all titled "FERNS" volumes 1 through 8

Everyone in the past was neurotypical, which is how we got things like this single-author, eight-volume encyclopedia of ferns

Totally not shocked

Press Release: Staggering Recovery of Plants and Seabirds on Marshallese Islands Just One Year After Rat Removal - Island Conservation Astonishing results from our work to restore sites in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, boosting climate resilience and ocean health!

"After only one year, the transformation is dramatic. A colony of 2000 Sooty Terns, where there was previously none, were feeding hundreds of chicks. We also counted 1000’s of native Pisonia grandis tree seedlings across just 60 12m monitored plots on the forest floor—in 2024 we found zero." 🌏

this is something that's been bothering me for ages! Decades of agricultural intensification had already occurred by the 1970s in many developed countries

I had some time to explore before #SER2025 started and was lucky enough to get to join a bird banding session at Barr Lake state park yesterday! So cool to see different warblers up close and see valuable data being collected

We've just recorded a Rare Earth on animal migration & this app is amazing. It's called Animal Tracker (www.icarus.mpg.de/29... ), and it's real time data on 100s of animals - birds, foxes, bison & more. Their tracks are fascinating, taking clear routes with intent. More to come next wk on the air!

NSW councils call for cat curfews to protect native wildlife Local Government NSW president Phyllis Miller says making owners lock their cats in at night should be a "no-brainer" decision, but animal welfare organisations disagree.

Keeping cats contained is safer for them and safer for the environment. This is a massive issue in Australia 🧪 The #biodiversity crisis is existential for humanity.
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09...

Predawn song of a Pied Butcherbird in early spring. Before sunrise at this time of year the song of butcherbirds (and Australian Magpies) is often made up of simpler, more repetitive phrases than the typical full song heard later in the morning - but it's still sublime!

#wildoz

PhD opportunity available at @westsyduhie.bsky.social with the brillant Dr Laura Williams - hyperspectral data and process-based modelling of tree diversity 🌳🌲 please share with your networks tinyurl.com/ms6mjz8y

i am loving these bird etymologies

Cormorant is just bastardized latin for corvus marinus (sea raven)

Two paper just out from the #clevercockieproject!

@julia-penndorf.bsky.social reveals how cockies play politics when deciding who to aggress: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....
&
@barbaraklump.bsky.social describes a new 'drinking innovation':
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Feral-free zones spark small mammal boom in Australian desert A 26-year study at the Arid Recovery Reserve reveals how removing invasive predators like cats and foxes triggers a dramatic reshaping of desert small mammal communities.

Long-term evidence for the benefits of feral removal in our arid zone. New paper from Katherine Moseby et al. in Proc Royal Soc B - royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... #wildoz

Nature Ecology & Evolution highlights our paper about bird niches keeping pace with climate change in a news & views feature:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

had the wonderful surprise of running into my first glossy black-cockatoos 5 minutes from my house yesterday!

a tortoiseshell cat raises a white mittened paw towards the camera

a tortoiseshell snoot fills the frame

puzz kindly helping me test my new lens

I am happy to share my final PhD chapter in @oikosjournal.bsky.social

The 2019–20 wildfires altered vegetation structure yet had little effect on most species’ relative abundance. However, several species shifted their diel activity in burnt landscapes.

doi.org/10.1002/oik....

#FireEcology

Birbs Australian mammal with bird references in both its common and scientific name; Banding code for a bird that would make a schoolchild snigger; The funkiest of the terns; Favourite snack of mistletoebir...

this is very niche, but i made a crossword for my sydney birding group: crosshare.org/crosswords/y... Let me know if you have a go!

A group of gannets diving underwater in a hunting frenzy.

Dancing gannets #sciart

white-faced heron hunting at manly dam || 21.6.25