Bec Jones

A Common guillemot with a large fish in its mouth. Photo: Joshua Pedley.

Continuing our #AUKTOBER theme, here's a Common guillemot (or Common murre) with its beak full 🐧🐟

These little guys are incredible freedivers - recorded diving at depths of up to 180m in pursuit of prey 🤿 They have even been spotted through the window of submarines! ⚓

#Seabirds #SuperSeabirdSunday

Welcome to Super Seabird Sunday where we ask you to share photos, videos & artwork of seabirds to brighten up timelines. To get us started here are thousands of Puffins on the Isle of May #SuperSeabirdSunday

A week on from #StormAmy 🌬️ data from our tagged Whooper Swans show both storm assistance & storm displacement. Some birds made rapid migrations, others battled the elements – some out at sea for 55 hrs! As North Atlantic storms grow more frequent, understanding their impact is vital. 🦢 #Ornithology

#ornithology
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

We suggest that daily carcass removal may have kept environmental transmission at bay, and that increased immunity and/or a change of the strain of HPAI may have caused the drop in mortality among the outbreak years.

#Seabirds #Ornithology

Out @animalecology.bsky.social today - a paper with David Ewing in which we explore the #HPAI outbreak in the terns. We find bird-to-bird transmission to be the main driver of infection and estimate the probability of mortality to drop from 0.26 to 0.14 from 2022 to 2023: doi.org/10.1111/1365...

A nice thread highlighting key findings from our new paper estimating parameters of #HPAI in subsequent outbreaks in common terns. We developed a Bayesian inference approach to infer parameters from just carcass counts. #seabirds #statisticalecology #diseaseecology

doi.org/10.1111/1365...

Seriously underrated birds 🙂

Young lives cut short on an unimaginable scale: the 18,457 children on Gaza’s list of war dead Every name on a list compiled by health authorities in Gaza of the child victims of Israel’s offensive

Can we please stop adding to this list?

www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

Wild Birds Affected by Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A (H5N1) Worldwide: Epidemiological Insights Into the Recent Panzootic | onlinelibrary.wiley.... | Global Change Biology | #ornithology 🪶

An Atlantic puffin at the colony.

New paper alert: Behavioral response of Atlantic Puffins Fratercula arctica to marine heatwaves in the Gulf of Maine, USA: A webcam study. By Julie Wallace et al.
#seabirds #OpenAccess #HeatWaves

www.marineornithology.org/PDF/53_2/53_...

🚨 New paper in @marineorno.bsky.social : Brown-headed gulls migrate through the Himalaya! By Gayomini Panagoda
#seabirds #OpenAccess #CentralAsianFlyway

www.marineornithology.org/PDF/53_2/53_...

Marine heatwaves to become more frequent off UK and Irish coasts, experts say Scientists find 10% chance that similar events to the ‘unheard of’ temperatures in 2023 could occur each year

Marine heatwaves to become more frequent off UK and Irish coasts, experts say www.theguardian.com/environment/... 🦑🌎🧪

‘Eyes on the Skies’ – new campaign to raise awareness of raptor persecution in the Yorkshire Dales National Park Following the recent collapse of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Bird of Prey Partnership (due to its failure to tackle crimes against birds of prey), and the news that since 2015, 29 Hen Harrier…

An excellent new initiative led by a local community that is sick to the back teeth of illegal raptor persecution inside this National Park.

Bravo, @friendsofthedales.bsky.social

#RaptorResearch #WildlifeCrime

raptorpersecutionuk.org/2025/10/08/e...

Want to know everything about bird smell?
I wrote an "Ornithological masterclass" on Avian Olfaction for BTO News @btobirds.bsky.social #ornithology
Link to the article 👉 www.researchgate.net/publication/...

"In the five years since leaving the EU, rather than protecting British fish, politicians have set catch limits too high, allowing international trawlers to plunder stocks..."
😠

More than 40 Trump administration picks tied directly to oil, gas and coal, analysis shows More than 40 Trump administration picks tied directly to oil, gas and coal, analysis shows: Report looks at White House nominees and appointees and agencies dictating energy, environment and climate policy Donald Trump has placed dozens of people with ties to the fossil fuel sector in his...

More than 40 Trump administration picks tied directly to oil, gas and coal, analysis shows: Report looks at White House nominees and appointees and agencies dictating energy, environment and climate policy Donald Trump has placed dozens of people with ties to the fossil fuel sector in his...

More than 10% of Gaza’s population killed or injured: the cost of two years of war New reports shed light on the scale of death and destruction in the embattled enclave

More than 10% of Gaza’s population killed or injured: the cost of two years of war

World Bank and BirdLife launch historic conservation push The latest Global Flyway Initiative aims to save critical bird habitats and link three continents across the African-Eurasian Flyway…

A historic partnership for people and nature. ✨

The World Bank and BirdLife International are scaling up conservation efforts across the African-Eurasian Flyway 🤝, supporting over 2 billion migratory birds and numerous communities. 🌍

Discover more here: www.birdlife.org/news/2025/10...

Picked a cicada exuvia off a persimmon tree

A breeding pair of Gannets on the Bass Rock with their chick. One of the adults clearly has a black eye, an indicator of past exposure to highly pathogenic avian influenza, while the other is normal/healthy.

Very cool new #seabird paper showing no difference in breeding success between healthy and black-eyed gannets, but a worrying overall decline in productivity following the #avianflu outbreak. 🦠🐣

Read the paper here 👉 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #seabirds #ornithology

Global investment in renewable energy up 10% on 2024 despite Trump rollback Growth rate slightly lower than previous first-half years but sector still strong and resilient, experts say

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

A Guillemot perches on a rock against a blue sky. Wording to the left reads: Seabird Indicator. A graph below shows the UK Seabird Indicator with year and index of change. Three lines depict subsurface piscivores, piscivores and all species.

5/ The UK Seabird Indicator, comprising 13 species, has declined by 37% since 1986. Showing a shallow decline since 2000, the index has taken a sharper downward turn in the last five years which likely reflects the impact of Avian Flu. #Seabirds

Opportunities and challenges for new technologies in seabird population monitoring Abstract. Monitoring of seabird population size and demography has for decades relied on observer-based methods. While such methods have allowed the accumu

🚨 New #seabirds paper 🚨

Following a workshop at the International Seabird Group Conference 2024 & led by @seabirdmortenf.bsky.social, we review opportunities & challenges for new technologies in seabird monitoring 🎥💻🐣

Link below! ⬇️ #ornithology
doi.org/10.1093/ices...

Image of two Turtle Doves perching on branches over water, one leans down to take a drink. Wording to the left reads: Wild Bird Indicators. For populations in the UK and England, 1970 to 2024. Out now!

1/ The Wild Bird Indicators, using BTO data, have been updated today by Defra! ⬇️

Sadly, the ‘all bird species’ index, comprising the population trends of 130 species, has been in a slow continuous decline in the UK since the 1970s, down by 18% and by 4% in the last five years. 📉 #Ornithology

Long suspected the majority of deaths from natural disasters occur in the years afterwards due to ongoing health, wellbeing and economic impacts. We currently only count the immediate deaths and therefore hugely underestimate the impacts. Such important work as natural disasters increase.

When we hypothesised female terns to have lower mercury levels than males due to egg laying, @matteobeccardi.bsky.social et al designed an elegant experiment to prove the effectiveness of this pathway. That proof just got published & the open access paper can be found here: doi.org/10.1016/j.en...

To lead or to follow: disentangling the genetic and cultural contributions to long-distance seabird migration at University of Liverpool on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - To lead or to follow: disentangling the genetic and cultural contributions to long-distance seabird migration at University of Liverpool, listed on FindAPhD.com

Delighted to be cosupervising this funded PhD with @joewynnbirds.bsky.social on #migration in #birds #seabirds @liverpooluni.bsky.social. Start in early 2026! Register for our online briefing session. www.findaphd.com/phds/project...