🦆 Alee Vestal-Laborde M.S.

A sobering fact: We’ve lost around 3 billion #birds in North America since 1970 — a loss of nearly one in four birds.

And yet, this week a congressional panel is meeting to consider weakening the #MigratoryBirdTreatyAct.

We'll continue to fight for them.

Join us ➡️ bit.ly/4cu2DpR

A lot of people say AI isn't very good for the world and its outputs are routinely unreliable, but these haters fail to see how it's revolutionizing how we incinerate schoolchildren.

Day 1 waterfowl flyway conference. Lets go. 🦆

In light of the news that the Trump administration was successful in their cartoon-villain-scheme to rip the Lesser Prairie-chicken off the Endangered Species List, I’ll just say:

this alone would be enough to make me a radical opponent of this administration. As if we needed more reasons.

Almost missed today because I had a poster to present at a symposium.

#birds #art #BirdWhisperer

Dr. Simpson nails the issue. RFK Jr's demand that all vaccines be tested against placebos reflects a complete disregard for medical ethics. Following the horrors of "Untreated Syphilis Study" at Tuskegee, researches NEVER deny care to study participants. It is immoral to do so, or to suggest it.

a woman says i hate it with her mouth open ALT: a woman says i hate it with her mouth open

UGH.

I think this baby is done. ❤️

#SciArt #watercolor

Put in some work on this guy before we head out to hit a parade today.

I am so many days into this guy and just doing the slightest layers each time I sit down. We’re getting somewhere but it’s slow.

Best image of 2026.

This is, once again, like Captain Planet villain comic book stupidly one-dimensionally evil.

Friends from Minneapolis reporting to me that things are at the point where folks are being hidden in other people's houses and we are in the "again" part of "never again" which the "never" was supposed to preclude

No one has ever tried to sell me drugs as hard as people try to sell me on AI.

I'd watch a muppet show movie where the muppets infiltrate an academic conference.

Iron Man meme, edited, Obadiah Stane yelling, "Your ancestors made timeless art in a cave! With berries and ash!"

"I need AI to make art, human art is only for the rich and privileged-"

Watercolor painting in progress with a merganser eating a crawfish.

Got a touch of paint down before I head into work.

I love all my babies equally, but, I already like this guy more equally.

cognitive reframing ahead of quals:

❌ I will be stuck in a room with a firing squad of friends and allies whose eyes will go red like robots in the movies for 2 hours to grill me

✅ THEY will be stuck in there with ME while I talk a 2 hour blue streak about my very favorite stuff in the world 😌

January 2026 reads

Watercolor painting of 3 ducks standing at the edge of a river.

It took about 14 scans, but I got these guys onto the computer finally. #watercolor

Duck update. Working on the back guy now. #watercolor #humanmade

This guy is my last bird for #birbfest2026 this year, the red junglefowl.

I think these guys might be the first of my art that I properly hang up in the house.

Gryfalcon for the first #BirdWhisperer bird of the year! I think I accidentally gave him kestrel proportion vibes during the sketching process. #watercolor

I’ve been working on these guys for 10 days and I think the front guy is nearly there. Biggest #watercolor painting that I have ever attempted.

"106,636 years of federal work experience were lost across the 10,109 employees with Ph.D.s who departed STEM or health roles 1 January–30 November."

It isn't just the scientific knowledge but the *institutional* knowledge that's been lost. Rebuilding federal science will be a generational effort.

A digital painting of an ice cube, followed by several hands closed over each other with water pouring from them. Bold text on the art reads: "ICE MELTS".

so don't get too comfortable.

#art

I have spent my entire adult life being lectured by Republican politicians and conservative legal movement types about how important it is to preserve the sacred constitutional right to self-defense of *specifically this person* and then secret police murdered him in the street

Today's #birbfest2026 birb is the Galah Cockatoo. The pinks were so much fun for these guys. One more to go and it's the bird I teach to vet students for my "How did we screw up chickens?" lecture each spring.

#watercolor #sciart