Maxime Dahirel

Dive into Wool Creature Lab's World of Vibrant Felted Nudibranchs How artist Arina Bovenich's job at a remote biology research station transformed into a unique craft practice.

Wow, amazing #sciart via @thisiscolossal.com

omg

What are fish bank details? I have dentist appointments this month I need to bill them

A grey wagtail on a wall. It's a cute bird with a long tail (which it keeps wagging while walking around, hence the name), a generally grey back and head (with some white on the throat and around the eye), and a strikingly yellow breast and belly

The same bird, looking down the wall at something

A bird that might or might not be the same grey wagtail (there were two flying around), on some tree stakes

Blurry wagtail flying away

Forced myself to get some outside air in the couple rain-free hours we're going to get this weekend, was Rewarded with Very Cooperative Bird, 10/10

Conté à Paris : Carres : Colour Crayons Firm and square colour crayons made of natural pigments and clay. Suitable for smooth and textured surfaces.

Like others in reply I would actually guess some of the harder pastels? like www.jacksonsart.com/conte-carres...

Dog whelk | The Wildlife Trusts This sea snail is abundant on rocky shores around the UK. It is an active predator, feasting on mussels and barnacles before retreating to crevices to rest.

www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife-exp...

why do so many species I work with have so many long names

New frontiers in catfishing

Banded Garden Spider (Argiope trifasciata) Argiope trifasciata (the banded garden spider or banded orb weaving spider) is a species of spiders found around the world. It can be found in certain areas of Europe, namely the Iberian Peninsula, th...

the all-leg stockings is actually what one of the things that got me (I'm pretty sure) the species ID: www.inaturalist.org/taxa/67708-A... (compare legs www.inaturalist.org/taxa/50867-A...) (Also A. trifasciata seems to be by far the most common in Madeira)

France, French/English, camion de pompiers (firefighter truck)/it depends between fire truck and fire engine?

Because the small crab is eating them instead of grapes, apparently bsky.app/profile/goth...

you cannot keep making me read Sentences

A reed bed covering the entire photo. In there there is (I promise) one brown heron-like bird that's well-camouflaged

A crop of the previous photograph, you can see the bittern though it's still hidden behind reeds

No idea why that bittern decided to spend part of winter in one of the most urban wetlands we have around (10-15 min walk from international train station, barely longer by public transport from home), but finally managed to catch it, only took 5 tries

"What if wasps but chibi?" "Sure why not"

This is somehow the most birb wasp I've ever seen

The greatest joy in my life as an academic is being asked this type of question

*looks non-binarily* ah yes

if you don't care about the space, for species it's good old Zea mays, or Biza ava (both 21) hoppers.speciesfile.org/otus/39953/o...

Following up on a reply from @stephenbheard.bsky.social: the highest scoring 7-tiles names (so you can play them from the first round) are:
genus: Zyxmyia (31, another bee fly!) www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/64795382
species: Poa fax (only 18, already mentioned in the post)

I mean if you're lucky you can always have x....quetzal... aligned on the board and go from there? Which is why I didn't go that deep, technically there's always theoretical combinations that would let you play these words, however rare

But then are we playing taxonomic names only, or allowing a mix with "normal" words?

Yes, of course (I thought about writing a bit about that, but...)! Though for Xochiquetzallia, "quetzal" *is* a playable word, so...

Because why not, I finally wrote it up:

"What’s the highest score we could get in Scrabble if we play a taxonomically valid genus/species name?"

mdahirel.github.io/posts/2026-0...

A quick digital sketch of a common kingfisher, on a messy green background meant to evoke leaves

I'm not drawing much rn so I'm not doing #birbfest or anything but apparently today's birb is the common kingfisher and I love them, so here's an old drawing I already recycled a few weeks ago

I've been using 19th century landscape paintings of London (vs 21st century photographs) a lot in my urban ecology talks when discussing the last couple centuries of urbanization, but this works too

bsky.app/profile/name...

if i saw a fish i thought was a catfish but apparently not a catfish would that be considered reverse catfishing

bsky.app/profile/mdah...

For no reason whatsoever remembering the time @franzanth.bsky.social made me try to find out what would be the highest scoring valid genus and genus+species names in scrabble

After looking a bit in my usuals, Cell Press journals like Current Biology and Trends in Ecology and Evolution have "Download full issue at once" buttons (www.cell.com/current-biol...), but that's really not common and even they do that as an unsorted zip of all the pdfs, rather than a single pdf