Rowan Kuminski

We've now got translations of our #InverteFest graphic on our website!! You'll find Bahasa Indonesia, Español, Français and Italiano so far, with more to come soon.

#InverteFest is GLOBAL, because everyone should love bugs.

www.metrofieldguide.com/invertefest/

¡Volvemos con el podcast!

✔️Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXJSQcR3EqY&list=PLp7uYJI4V_U51hGn1YMmsBi2lO_YQECvz
✔️Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6w9qXvCr5BHLCvNN6JOADE?si=10e9fe6c58594359
✔️Ivoox: https://www.ivoox.com/127897-ep-2x01-volvemos-al-campo-audios-mp3_rf_153013199_1.html

LPS is still looking for volunteers for this upcoming year, if anyone is interested!

Winter ASAB 2025 December 15th-16th Edinburgh ASABwinter.github.io/2025/ How sensory information affects behaviour Logo of a moth

Join us for #ASABWinter2025 in Edinburgh Dec 15-16 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Abstracts for posters/talks due Aug 29

More details here: asabwinter.github.io/2025/

🌿 Thousands of pressed plants
🧳 Centuries of global collecting
📜 Millions of herbarium records - digitised & ready to explore!

Our Data Portal is growing - come browse the collection: data.kew.org?utm_source=b...

💬 Already using the data? We’d love to hear from you! 📗🌾

A photo of a book on a wooden surface: the book is a hardcover book with a white to sky blue gradient, and a black outline of a bird of prey flying in the bottom right of the cover, and the same outline but larger in blue on the left side of the book, extending to the back cover. The title says "Birds" in red, then in black letters the sub-title "Alternative Names: A World Checklist". The author's name, Walter Lodge, is written in red at the bottom of the book

One of the local thrift stores always has the best bird guides/books, and today brought one of my favourite finds there so far, a book on alternative names for species used around the world! (although unfortunately just for English names)

A selfie photo of a person with a brown winter coat with the hood up, as it's raining slightly. They're holding a white envelope and smiling

STEM FRIENDS!
Letters to a Pre-Scientist registration is still open for this next year! This program matches STEM professionals with middle/high school students to encourage them to follow their passions and show them that anyone can be a scientist. I highly recommend it!

prescientist.org/register/

Gracias!!

A picture of a painting on a canvas; it is of a fulmar seabird smoking a cigarette on a solid black background

When I was learning Spanish, I remembered the word fumar (to smoke) by picturing a fulmar with a cigarette, and this week I decided to paint it 😅

A digital drawing on a dark blue background of three stages of the zebra shark life cycle. The first is a small brown and tan striped shark; underneath is a slightly larger shark that is now more tan but still had some light brown remnants of stripes; the third is an adult and is tan with a white belly and black spots. The title in white is "Zebra Shark" and it's scientific name "Stegostoma tigrinum"

It's also Shark Awareness Day, the perfect time to celebrate one of my favourite non-bird animals, the zebra shark! Although they're born with stripes, their pattern becomes spotted when they mature!

Love this!

A selfie photo of a person with brown hair in a ponytail wearing a white tank top, sitting in a bird hide. They are holding binoculars with a green neck strap, and have a notebook and mini-guides in front of them on the small ledge

Today is International Non-Binary People’s Day, which celebrates this beautiful identity and raises awareness about the struggles we still face because of it. Every year I post a happy photo of myself birding because despite the ignorance/hatred of some people, they have not been able to erase joy 🏳️‍⚧️

Image of a Puffin by Sarah Kelman/BTO alongside wording over the image that reads: We're hiring. Senior Research Ecologist. Bioacoustics Support Officer. Seabird Monitoring Support Officer. www.bto.org/jobs

Join us at BTO! Discover jobs and apply at www.bto.org/jobs

A photo of a painted wall at a roundabout. The wall is long and has a rainbow painted along it. In white cursive on the left is the word "Amar", and in white block letters after it says "es un derecho humano" (to love is a human right). In between the two blocks of text are two figurines in rainbow with a heart between them

Seen in Plasencia, Spain: "To love is a human right" 🏳️‍🌈

A photo of an Audouin's gulls standing on a wooden post with a rope running through it. In the background the sky is cloudless and there are mountains in the distance

A close up photo of the Audouin's gull's legs, while it is standing on the wooden post. The bird's left leg has a white Darvic ring with the black ID code "CYAP", and on the right leg is a small metal ring

For #SuperSeabirdsSunday, here's one of the many Audouin's gulls I got to see this week in the Ebro Delta! Each time I visit, I take pictures of as many ringed individuals as I can, then report them as resightings!

A photo of the Ebro Delta, which has long grass in most of the foreground, as well as trees on the right hand side of the photo. Running through the middle and on the left side are still bodies of water. In the background are mountains and the sky is blue with some light clouds

Photo of Monfragüe National Park. There are two rocky cliffs, one large one farther away in the center of the photo and a smaller one closer to the foreground. In between them is a green/blue body of water

Ebro Delta ➡️ Monfragüe National Park

Been conducting my first social science pilot study in almost a decade, which has been a very enjoyable challenge! I also have gotten to see lots of familiar bird species (and some lifers!) along the way!

Rhinoceros Auklet, by Mathew Schwartz

Today is World Seabird Day!

World Seabird Day was created to commemorate the extinction of the Great Auk, a flightless seabird last seen on July 3, 1844, and to celebrate the many incredible seabird species still with us, like this Rhinoceros Auklet, seen in British Columbia.

A photo of four signs pinned vertically on a wooden bird hide wall. They have images of commonly observed birds and QR codes. The text is too small to see on the first three signs but the last one says "60 aves en llngua de signos"

A screenshot of a YouTube Playlist titled "Aves en lengua de signos. There is a list of short videos showing how to sign different bird species names in LSC

This is, by far, the coolest thing I've ever seen in a bird hide. QR codes to links that show the birds' names in Catalan and Spanish sign language (LSC, LSE). There were also signs with the birds' Catalan, Spanish, English, and local names. We need more of this in birding spaces!! 🪶

(2/2) messages, I am not sure how/why this happened, but for the safety of everyone who followed the page, I decided to delete it. However I will be thinking of ways to start this from the ground up in the future. Apologies again, of you recieved such a message please ignore/delete it

Blue background with digital drawing of a zebra, facing the left side of the screen. Next to it is the words "Animales en Español" in black and white

(1/2):Devastated to find that my Animales en Español page was hacked and that inappropriate spam was sent out from the account. Unfortunately this led to the decision to delete the account, which hurts as this was a labor of love and hard work. Sincerest apologies to anyone who received these ...

Well that's really disturbing/upsetting, thank you for letting me know I'm trying to deal with that right now

A zoomed in picture taken on a phone of a yellow legged gull standing in front of a red Nissan car (license plate crossed out),with its head leaned over picking bugs off the front of the car

Was reading a book and watching a few yellow-legged gulls chase dragonflies, and eventually this one gave up and decided to just go down the line of cars in the car park and take the bugs that had been squished on cars. A cool behaviour I've never seen before!

A photo of a road sign, which is brown and the main section has a green, white, blue, and yellow depiction of the Ebro Delta, with white letters underneath saying "Delta de l'Ebre" and "3 km" with an arrow pointing to the right. The top of the sign has two smaller sections that say the distance (2000m) and the highway route number (41)

📍Delta de l'Ebre / Ebro Delta

Still reeling from the pure joy of not only being back in my favourite place in the world, but getting to be here to conduct an interdisciplinary pilot study!!

Plus I've already gotten to practice my Catalan a bit while here!

It's been a year since a staff member in my dept gave my info to an anti-trans hate group for allegedly taking down misogynistic/transphobic posters he put up, even though I wasn't even in the country. I got doxxed, threatened, and received hate messages for months. Aberdeen still has yet to respond

A light pink background with a digital drawing of several seabkrds standing together in a group: the bird in the front center is a fulmar, which has the colours of the non-binary flag (yellow, white, purple, black); the birds behind it are seabirds (gulls, auklets, penguins, terns, and a guillemot) in their normal colours

At the end of #Pride every year I post this because I would not be where I am without the friends, mentors, and Allies who have gotten me through the hardest years of my life at Aberdeen. Happy Pride to those who provide me with support, safety, and hope so I can do what I love, study seabirds 💙

Another instance of performative allyship by @uniofaberdeen.bsky.social : putting up the Pride flag after abusing its trans students and then taking it down in time for graduation so no external people see it. Happy Pride from Aberdeen I guess

Thrilled to announce our webinar series:

🌱📈 Quantifying Ecology 📈🌱

We are collaborating with our SIG friends to bring you quantitative methods in different ecological contexts.

Kicking off with Dr @jamesaorr.bsky.social and @bes-aquaticgroup.bsky.social on 5th August. More details to come!

Four digital drawing panels: 1) A brown spectacled owl with white "spectacle"-like feathers around its face, with a smile and the text "Hola! Soy Luz, un búho de anteojos" above it; the background is teal/blue with white stars. 2) A spectacled owl flying, in front of a map of South America, with its range highlighted in orange-brown; the text above the owl says "Vivo en Panamá, pero los búhos anteojos pueden vivir en los bosques, sabanas, y humedales en muchos países de Latinoamérica"; the blue ocean blackground is textured to look wavy. 3) An adult spectacled owl standing on a branch, with the text "Soy un adult, entonces tengo plumaje oscuro..." above its head; smaller text next to it with arrows pointing to its body say "Plumas blancas de 'anteojos' en la cara y frente blanco y marrón anaranjado", and "Las plumas marrones en al cabeza y el cuerpo"; the background is a lime green with a darker outline of trees. 4) A juvenile spectacled owl, which is white with a grey face and wingtips, and is smaller than the adult; the text above its head says "...pero cuando era joven, tenía plumaje blanco", and the smaller text says "Plumas negras en la cara" and "Plumas blancas en todo el cuerpo"; the background is the same green as the previous panel

Three digital drawing panels (continued from first image). 5) A spectacled owl flying looking downwards, with the text "Soy nocturno, lo que significa que soy activo durante la noche; me gusta volar y buscar comida"; the background is a dark teal starry sky, with a full moon in the top left corner. 6) A faded yellow landscape, with logged trees on the ground and short tree stumps, and a yellow bulldozer on the righthand side of the image; there are brown outlines of trees on the horizon and a grey sky, with the outline of an owl flying in the background and a speech bubble with a red exclamation mark. 7) An adult spectacled owl with its wings outspread and its eyes closed in happiness, and a juvenile owl next to it, smiling; both have a joint speech bubble above their head, which says "Para saber más sobre nosotoros y nuestra conservación, consulta: EcoCuentos Panama", on a lime green background

Finished my first design course (on scientific illustrations for kids) in my second language! Quite proud because 1) my drawing pad is still in the US and I had to do the whole course using my laptop trackpad 😅 and 2) 2 years ago I was in beginner Spanish classes and now I can do a course like this!

Introducing {avilistr}: The AviList Global Bird Taxonomy is Now Available in R | Daly Analytics The Cornell Lab of Ornithology announced the release of AviList — the first unified global bird taxonomy. Today, I'm excited to share that this groundbreaking dataset is now available to R users thro...

🦆 My new R package {avilistr} is live on CRAN! 🎉

The first unified global bird taxonomy (11,131 species) is now accessible to #rstats users. I built it this weekend after Cornell Lab's AviList release last week!

🪿 Blog: www.dalyanalytics.com/blog/avilist...
💻 GitHub: github.com/dalyanalytic...

A graphic with a photo by Jen Goellnitz of a female Rose-breasted Grosbeak sitting in a nest she is building. There is also an inset photo of a male Rose-breasted Grosbeak by Doug Greenberg. They male has a speech bubble that says: "My lady has pipes!" The female has a text bubble that says "Whistle while you work..." Text on the graphic says: "Unsolicited bird fact: Both male and female Rose-breasted Grosbeaks sing- this isn't so unusual. Scientists are learning female birds sing more often than we thought. What is unusual is that Rose-breasted Grosbeaks of both sexes sing from their nest. Typically, birds try to be inconspicuous around their nests- presumably to help keep predators from finding it."

Did you ask for a bird fact? No, but you're getting one whether you like it or not. 🪶 Happy Friday!