Kyle Elliott

A female Western Gull was recorded riding 150km in a garbage truck from San Francisco to a compost facility in Central CA, probably to forage. TWICE. An innovator, an icon, a genius.

This is one of my favorite @waterbirdsociety.bsky.social papers I've ever handled as managing editor #ornithology

Individual Behavioral Responses to Novel Stimuli in Breeding Common Terns (Sterna hirundo) We analyzed behavioral responses of 42 breeding terns to novel stimuli, considering intrinsic characteristics. The response was repeatable, stronger (i.e., individuals approached slower) in females a...

ETHOLOGY: How do breeding common terns react to novelty? 🐦🪺🔺😲 Castano et al. find that females take consistently longer than males to return to the nest after encountering a novel object—and that responses vary by reproductive stage but not age.
#AnimalBehavior #OpenAccess doi.org/10.1111/eth....

She'd do great in Montreal.

A wooden post, perhaps 10 feet tall, of old, grey, weathered wood. The top is carved in the face of a man, elongated, with a very long nose and open, blank eyes. His expression is solemn but not unfriendly. A horseshoe is nailed to the post, open end up, about where the man's upper chest would be. Behind the post is a thicket of leafless tree branches; in front of it is a low fence of tumbled, round stones.

I don't know a lot about this fellow, but I feel like I wouldn't mind being supervised by him. Viinistu, Estonia.

A great summary of Fred's recent work!

The #Arctic might be a cold place, but microclimates can get HOT! The cliffs where murres nest can get to a whopping 46.5°C in the full sun.

New work by MSc student Frederique Tremblay, @emilyschoy.bsky.social, @tattersallg.bsky.social & many others available free:

doi.org/10.1016/j.cb...

A new use of the asterisk in the paper author list for credit assignment

The Ivy Lab! - Welcome to the Ivy Lab!

Do you like songbirds? Are you concerned about how wildfire smoke may impact their physiology?

I'm searching for graduate students who are interested in looking at the effect of wildfire smoke on songbird physiology! Come join my lab @usaskartsci.bsky.social!

research-groups.usask.ca/ivy-lab/

Eulachon time! All GPS-tracked Middleton kittiwakes are off to the Copper River Delta for eulachon oil, the same stuff that made the Chugach some of the healthiest First Nations on the coast (& which they called "saak").

Thanks to Alexia Nezondet for the updates!

A bit disingenuous: "No effect of carrying a... harness... on energy expenditure" & "We did not find any evidence for an effect of carrying a VHF radio transmitter on energy expenditure (p = 0.20; Fig. 1)." The increase in flight costs is 4%--small perhaps, but not "no effect" or "no evidence".

"United Tufted Front: No PECOs Can Compete" Poster

"Show your support with yellow tufts! #PuffinPride" Poster

"PECO Revolution is a Hate Group" Poster

Another whiny poster.

Talk about entitled. This showed up at #MiddletonIsland.

99.3% of Instagram seabird pics, Best flight performance of any bird* & Starred alongside Robin Williams. Still unwilling to share the limelight with a few ol' cormorants.

*Highest wing-loading

#PuffinPrivilege #PuffinPeopleAreTheWorst

Arrival at #MiddletonIsland in the rain. Every year the undergrads seem to get younger.

Watch what happens. Changes in the age of #Arctic sea ice during springtime...

Note that younger sea ice is usually thinner and more vulnerable to melting. Data from doi.org/10.5067/UTAV...

C21 laid the first egg again & on the same day (May 7th), at least two weeks before the rest of the colony. Hopefully the egg does better than last year's! #MiddletonIsland #EarlyBirdIsntAlwaysBetter

Fields of plastic: gulls obtained plastic from farmland as often as the ocean, challenging our original assumptions that plastics are a marine problem.

A new paper out by an excellent team, led by @mcgilluniversity.bsky.social undergrad Sofia Higgs.

Hey! Are you an American considering a PhD or a postdoc, and the funding / academic situation just went absolutely bonkers?

Canada's federal funding awards just added eligibility for international applicants if at Cdn institutions.

www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/NewsDetail-D...

Data from 600+ tracked individual birds show that each summer, seabirds bring Hg across the Arctic from hotspots off the Canadian coast.

Shows the power of international collaboration & the vision of Celine Albert, Jerome Fort & SEATRACK.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

That's the most likely source. Middleton beaches are strewn with the most plastic I've ever seen, most of it from Japan (due to the currents).

GPS tracking reveals that kittiwakes ingest indigo-dyed plastic fibers in the Gulf of Alaska & feed them to their young. Our most recent paper out #OpenAccess below, led by Paolo Tremolada & Univ Milan.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

First field work of 2024, helping Christina Petalas & crew attach GPS to herring gulls to study origin of plastics-related contaminants.

Great to be out & do field work close to home!

Animated line graph time series of Arctic sea ice extent for every April from 1979 through 2024. There is large interannual variability and a long-term decreasing trend.

April 2024 #Arctic sea ice extent was the 16th lowest on record.

This was 570,000 km² below the 1981-2010 average. April ice extent is decreasing at about 2.44% per decade. Data: nsidc.org/data/seaice_...

More context on these numbers: zacklabe.com/climate-viz-...

Example of app

Window collision kill of Myrtle Warbler

Window collision kill of black-and-white warbler

Undergrads made an app to track bird window collisions around campus to find (& remedy) hotspots. (Exhibit A: photos around the CC building). Like the FLAP app, but at a local scale. Have others tried anything similar?

Do songbirds adjust their diet for moult (protein) or migration (energy)? Our #OpenAccess paper using fecal eDNA at a stopover suggests yes!

Undergrad-led paper by Ana Blanc-Benigeri w/ fantastic supporting cast of Vanessa Poirier, Barbara Frei & Desiree Narango

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Brainstorming ideas for improving biodiversity monitoring via undergrad courses. Anyone out there have good ideas?

Always rewarding to pull garlic mustard, but does seem like we're just holding back the tide. Every year, it just comes up worse than before.

Fantastic news, and kudos to the many people who've worked so hard for this!

It's almost that time of year! A short video on the loon monitoring at Kenauk:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7NC...

Impressive bee guide for campus created by undergrad Amicie Lavault. I might even be able to identify insects correctly for once!

High res version:
shorturl.at/jlEIL

Strangely, it's all very amicable. The shrike is very professional, wearing the same tie as my own vertebrate zoology professor from 20 years ago...