Congratulations Tamsin Mather!

The Oxon bike year has been slightly slow progress this month with only 4 new species so far: Black Tern, Spot Fly, Turnstone & Sanderling take me to 161 spp, 4 behind this time last year. It's not been a vintage spring locally & have missed a couple of key species due to travel

After rather a lot of May spent away or otherwise tied-up with work, a pleasure to catch up with my first Sanderling in Oxfordshire this year with this splendid group of 4 together with 2 Dunlin at Farmoor this evening

Few more photos of the 2 arctica Dunlin at Farmoor yesterday. Front bird most obvious w/ general pale appearance particularly on head, spotting rather than streaking on breast; second bird 3rd from right. Detail of scaps etc too. See excellent blog post
subalpinebirding.com/blog/greenland…

One of the advantages of working on great tits is that many people work on them. After a rather prolonged incubation, very nice to see this collaborative paper involving analysis of genomic variation across 29 populations with collaborators from 23 nations
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/17…

Congratulations ⁦Sarah Otto Outstanding scientists elected as Fellows of the Royal Society | Royal Society royalsociety.org/news/2024/05/n…

Thanks to Jamie C. Weir for this excellent example of scientific lateral thinking to unravel source of moth migrants.

This mobile platform lift - which reaches up to 21m into the canopy is allowing us to explore new dimensions (quite literally!) of the interaction between producers & consumers with respect to phenological match in ⁦Wytham Woods⁩ - part of the Phenoscale project

A Silver Y posed nicely on brambles in ⁦Wytham Woods⁩ - I wonder where this one hatched?

Awesome cover Aura Raulo Sarah CL Knowles Josh Firth !

Massive excitement this evening with my first record of Reed Warbler singing deep in scrub on Aston’s Eyot. My 101st species here. Video with sound

A few highlights from this morning. Rustic Bunting, Ring Ouzel, tristis-Chiffchaff and a Wryneck.

Another great week at Copeland Bird Observatory helping with the Avian Behaviour and Ecology field course - finishing of course with the spectacular aurora on the ferry back Ben Sheldon Ollie Padget James King Oxford Biology

The forecasts for tonight look good for a possible repeat of last night’s spectacular #aurora . Get outside after 10.30pm, and look north.

A fitting end to a wonderful week on Copeland Bird Observatory with Oxford Biology Avian Behaviour & Ecology course with the spectacular #Aurora display over the Irish Sea as we sailed from Belfast last night

More Greenland Wheatears on Copeland Island this morning; the one female trapped weighed >40g and had a wing length of 104mm. Puzzled as to the sex of this bird - stunning, either way.

A real highlight of this year's Avian Behaviour & Ecology course on Copeland Island was non avian... Watched this family of Otters swimming between the islands

Two male Wheatears on the north end of Copeland Island Copeland Bird Observatory this evening: a really richly coloured male surely bound for Greenland or thereabouts, and a more typical nominate male