Ron Efrat

OK R, no need to be passive-aggressive, I know I'm asking for too much

Error: [writeRaster] cannot write more than 65535 layers

"Why are you so happy to see this small brownish bird*?" I was asked during the first of a 4 day hike in the Alps.

These high altitude habitats, plants, birds and other critters are amazing.

Getting away from everything and celebrating life is important.

*bird too small, in the pic: not-a-bird

It worked!

Have been downloading weather (ERA5) data all night. 79 downloads required in total. I have 4 left and I need to close my computer in just over an hour.
And people say* that there's no pressure in academia

*I know nobody ever said that...

NEW on #theBOUblog

Who are we counting? Coupling GPS data and bird count data to improve our understanding of bird migration

Have a read of the latest blog contribution, from Ron Efrat

bou.org.uk/blog-efra...

#ornithology 🪶

Who are we counting? - British Ornithologists' Union Coupling GPS data and bird count data to improve our understanding of bird migration

Trying to figure out if we are doing what we think we are doing in migratory bird count surveys.

Now the blog version:
bou.org.uk/blog-efrat-w...

@bou.org.uk @batumiraptorcount.org @yaelbird.bsky.social

🪶🐾🧪

I agree, and I really try to avoid editorial comments, but it still takes me a few hours a paper. And on my side - I often feel the reviewers to my papers didn't spend enough time reviewing it. Then I get basic comments that do not improve the paper, or comments that stem from not reading properly.

I completely agree that it is part of our duty and education and that it improves writing greatly. But, 50 a year mean that either you are efficient in an extraordinary way, or that your work-life balance is not something I would recommend, or that you reviewed each paper too quickly.

50 papers a year? It takes me 2 hours to review an amazingly well written and short paper. That's 100 hours a year if you get just these papers. That's more than 10 days of work.
More likely 20-25 FULL days. That's way too much.

When GPS Spoofing (www.nature.com/articles/s41...) becomes art .

🧪🐾🪶
#MovementEcology #Biologging

Asked the same thing from DallE in January 2023 and today (May 2025) from sora. Here are the results for "A realistic painting of an Egyptian vulture playing basketball".

I am sure there is no need to explain why I asked this, probably one of the most common requests

© D. Tome

🚨 New paper alert 🚨

🪶 Evolutionarily distinct lineages of a migratory bird of prey show divergent responses to climate change 🪶

👉 rdcu.be/ehvAA

#LesserKestrel #ornithology #ClimateChange #Conservation

🧵👇 1/6

Postdoc alert! 🚨

How do young raptors learn to migrate? 2-year postdoc at Uni. Laussane with @enourani.bsky.social is offered to model evolution of learning strategies for behavioral development.

Application deadline is mid-June for a start in Jan 2026: career5.successfactors.eu/career?compa...

Do you have hours of videos📹with animals? Speed up your watching by using BEHAVE - a user-friendly, open-source, free, zero-install tool for coding animal behaviour in video recordings!
Try BEHAVE here: behave.claude-apps.com

Read more: sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

And it even includes a beautiful illustration

Ooops... Too late to fix.. #Conservation

Wow, very important (and brave)

Carbon majors and the scientific case for climate liability - Nature A transparent and reproducible scientific framework is introduced to formalize how trillions in economic losses are attributable to the extreme heat caused by emissions from fossil fuel companies, whi...

NEW: Fossil fuel firms like Chevron and Exxon owe the world trillions of dollars. Today in @nature.com, @jsmankin.bsky.social and I show economic losses from rising heat waves directly traceable to these firms, providing scientific support for climate accountability.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Sustainability and avian biodiversity tensions in wastewater management in arid zones Biodiversity is increasingly threatened by anthropogenic and climatic changes around the globe. Many animals lose the habitats where they can settle a…

We keep studying conservation from a distance not knowing enough about what happens on the ground
This paper is an example of important on-the-ground work, with implications to both conservation and understanding of animal behavior
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

#Conseravtion #Ornithology🧪🪶🐾

I just noticed that my post from 6 days ago is now in the feed. I don't have any other examples at the moment

Is this feed working? I am new to the feeds business, but it seems that there are no new posts there and when I posted something that I thought would go there, it didn't. At least as far as I can tell

🐦Post-doctoral position in Avian Behaviour.🐦

Examining the evolution of escape behaviour in threatened bird species as part of an ARC-funded project

Deakin Careers: careers.pageuppeople.com/949/cw/en/jo...

Seek: www.seek.com.au/job/83533248

Evolutionarily distinct lineages of a migratory bird of prey show divergent responses to climate change Nature Communications - Understanding species’ spatiotemporal dynamics is key to predicting their responses to climate change. Here, the authors combine landscape genomics, demographic...

#Evolution ✔️
#Genomics ✔️
#Climate_Change ✔️
#Raptors (Lesser Kestrels!)✔️
#Migration (Throughout their range!)✔️
#Movement_Ecology ✔️
#Past_reconstruction_and_Future_predictions ✔️
#Conservation

So thankful for the opportunity to be part of this amazing paper. It really has it all.
rdcu.be/eh2Sj
🧪🪶🐾

Review of evidence that foxes and cats cause extinctions of Australia's endemic mammals Abstract. Over half of Australia's threatened and extinct endemic mammal species have been attributed to introduced red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) and cats (Fel

A recent paper claims, opposed to what conservation science has known for decades, that there is no evidence that foxes and cats were a major driver of Australia's mammal extinctions. Turns out there are quite a few issues here. Strap in for a looong thread 🧪

academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...

Would be nice to be added. Thanks!

animove.org/next-animove...

YouTube video by Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior Scientists solve "cocktail party nightmare" of bat echolocation

When bats emerge from roosts by the thousands, they experience a "cocktail party nightmare" of jammed echolocations. Scientists didn't know how bats avoid colliding. Now, they do. Study by @ayagoldshtein.bsky.social and team from Tel Aviv Uni

▶️ www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

youtu.be/mIockHSehYw

EU tells public to stockpile 72 hours of supplies.

Germans in response: does this mean that we need to sell all the rest of the supplies we regularly stockpile?

Sorting out the history of whaling pressure on five populations of blue whales in the Indian Ocean and SW Pacific. So many years of work went into this monumental collaboration with many many coauthors. So pleased to see this paper finally published.
doi.org/10.1111/mms....

Me: "Good news! I got the Humboldt Fellowship!"
F: "That's amazing. But I don't understand why you don't look happier, I saw you much happier when you saw a bird"

Yes, that's probably true. I'm not sure what it means about me, but I am happy with it :)