Colin Beale

Hope you read this aloud to your fellow passengers.

So, next up is this fabulous project with me and @funkyant.bsky.social on nomadic birds in East Africa. Fieldwork and fancy spatial statistics are on offer here, and who doesn't want birds like this fabulous, nonadic Temminck's Courser?! www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Document that says Achievements: 140 countries have adopted net zero targets 39% capital value of global businesses with emission reduction targets aligned to the UN Paris Agreement

This afternoons light reading included NERC science's "Forward look". www.ukri.org/publications... I'm loving the brazen audacity with which they claim as their achievements the Paris climate accord, etc. It makes my own occasional hyperbole look positively unambitious! 🧪

Rather famous scottish landscape with the west highlands railway looping through mountains. A forest plantation is evident. A few small people on the left are doing their best not to be recognised.

Over the next few weeks I'll be sharing some fun PhD opportunities. Today, if you're into hydrology, forests and wading 🪶 in Scotland this one might be for you! 🧪 www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

So I've been reading the Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper. There's some good things in there. But when it comes to universities there's very little to cheer. The situation is very tough and will get worse. The last chance to preserve what we've got has passed. Let me explain why. (1/?)

This was an unexpected start to the morning!

Really glad to see this exciting and fun work from my PhD out - huge thanks to @janehillyork.bsky.social @cmbeale.bsky.social and Dr Blanca Huertas! Next summer, going to go to Sulawesi to link two of these regions with present day surveys! 🦋

This was a great paper to work with @tiff-ki.bsky.social and great to see it out now!

A great choice of someone who has done so much to inspire a new generation of ornithologists!

This was a lovely surprise and honour, to receive the 2025 Marsh Award for Ornithology from the British Trust for Ornithology @btobirds.bsky.social, at this evening’s opening of the Society of Wildlife Artists’ annual exhibition.

Fantastic news, Rob, many congratulations!

They’re back! Redwings.

A blog at

jonathanpomroy.wordpress.com

We are looking for a short-term residential volunteer to join the team from the 2nd to 19th October (+/-2 days). Tasks include morning bird monitoring (Point Counts / Visible Migration watches) and afternoon maintenance tasks (habitat/estate work)⬇️

Congrats to all those involved in the proposal writing!

Excited to share the preprint of our first @cascade-hei.bsky.social paper on “Potential for academic institutions to support international biodiversity commitments” 🌿 🌍.

Strikingly marked miniature barbet. Adults have a red patch above the bill, but immatures lack this. Found in woodland and savanna, ranging from arid to moderately moist. Most common call is a monotonously repeated “took” call that is sometimes given hundreds of times consecutively. Also gives a higher 2- or 3-part call and a fast trill.

Red-fronted Tinkerbird perched in the sun.

📍Mbuyuni Farm Retreat, Morogoro, Tanzania.

#Birds #NaturePhotography #Tanzania 🪶

I fear this bird visitor has had an unfortunate incident. She was sitting on our trellace looking dazed with a thread on her face & ruffled primaries this morning. Very cute, but wishing her well. Scarce locally, Goldcrests have already been turning up at the coast, so who knows where she's from?

This has been my experience too! With my bionic ears these days I can often hear things before the bright young students I hang out with sometimes!

Yes! I'm in the club too & well remember the first outing I took. I'd note that not all hearing aids are equal: I've had support from work to pay for somewhat more expensive ones to hear the birds I need to for research, & a proper outdoor setting & bluetooth ability to up amplification is good.

Pief flycatcher held for ringing - a very cure grey and white bird with striking white wing bars and huge black eyes. She's a young female, staring straight at the photographer.

Very angry looking young male sparrowhawk, staring intently at me with a vivid yellow eye as if he wants to tear me to shreds. He'f white with brown bars below, long yellow legs with point claws and brown above. He does, actually, want to eat me.

A beautiful wood warbler held for ringing - it is green on top with yellow edges to the ver long wing and tail, has a lovely yellow throat and eye ring and is beautifuly clean white below.

Some different #birdringing today, as I'm at @spurnbirdobs.bsky.social on the east coast. It's still early autumn here, but a fantastic variety of #birds ringed this morning, with 8 warbler species including a fantastic wood warbler, and fun birds like this Pied Flycatcher and a young Sparrowhawk.

A juvenile lesser whitethroat looking confused about the world, and very scruffy. It's grey and brownish, and rather cute.

Thanks to all who have helped out with the season, and here's hoping there are birds aplenty for all! Roll on the autumn... All birds captured under license from @btobirds.bsky.social - find out more about ringing here: www.bto.org/get-involved... 5/5

Here's a baby blue tit being ringing - we do a few in nest boxes and hope to see them in our nets when they fledge. It is poking out between fingers with a cute yeelow face and greyish cap.

Although I won't miss arriving on campus at 5am, I'm already wondering what season we'll have next year: will there be good over winter survival & a high population to start with? Will we be back to the glory days of 2021?! Monitoring is addictive - & contributes valuable data to national schemes. 4

A baby treecreeper held for ringing. Another spotty bird, this has a cute down turned bill

have had their best years ever, including tits & blackbird. The number of reed warblers ringed is spectacular: we use only 21m of net in or adjacent to reeds, & we've caught ~90 individual reed warblers over the season! Rumour has it similar results may well be reported across UK.🤞3/5

A baby robin held for ringing - it is a super spotty bird, borwn with big cream spots everywhere.

After several years of declining numbers we started the year with very few adults & the first few sessions were slow, but productivity has been spectacular. Measuring juveniles per adult gives us a useful index of success that simply can't be done without bird ringing, & several species... 2/5

Two figures, the left showing the cumulative number of unique birds ringed across the season for five years, showing that this year just squeeks in at second place overall and second place for juveniles too. On the right are plots of numbers and productivity (juvenile:adult ratios) for the 10 most common species. Productivity in tits and blackbirds has hit all time highs, with several other species close to the top too. Only Willow Warbler has bombed this year, part of a long term trend.

Today marked the end of our @btobirds.bsky.social Constant Effort Site ringing for 2025. We've run a site on campus for 5 years now. I think I might be the first to have a preliminary analysis of the season ready & great news: it has been a cracking breeding season here! #birds #ornithology 1/5

Check out this Senior Research Ecologist- Bioacoustics vacancy @btobirds.bsky.social

britishtrustforornithology.postingpanda.uk/job/734089

#ornithology 🪶

🎓🎉Huge congratulations to all our graduates!

A fantastic achievement and a lovely day celebrating all your hard work with family and friends.

A graph showing how connectivity impacts occupancy of woodland species over three different levels of woodland cover. The lines show positive impacts of connectivity at 10% cover, and largel flat at 30% and 50%.

Benefits only occurred in areas where cover was below 30%, a threshold people have suggested before. Although there's a lot of work on connectivity, empirical evidence that it impacts occupancy is rarer. Great work Charles & thanks to coauthors @janehillyork.bsky.social @anthropocenebio.bsky.social

Good British woodland with strange primates. Early spring - a wild and wavy oak tree.

Charles' work takes 800 species of 15 taxonomic groups with presence associated with UK woodland, and evaluates how important connectivity is above and beyond the simple impacts of area (landscapes with better conected woodland typically have more woodland in total too). He finds ~40% benefit. 2/

A figure showing how different invertebrate species show impacts in relation to woodland covr. Overall the connectivity effect is small, but all groups show it.

Great to see @charles-cunningham.bsky.social's paper out on the impacts of woodland connectivity on the presence of woodland species in the UK. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Although ecologists talk about connectivity being important to maintain, the evidence that this is true is weak. 1/