Here are some of my favorites from the past few years! (In no particular order and with no biases 😉😂.)
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
doi.org/10.1098/rspb...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...
www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...
recent = " from when I was a grad student or more recently", right?
Idk if you'd consider it "recent", but I discussed this last year and am planning to discuss it again this year. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nonstop flights in a wind tunnel of 28 hours!!
these are spectacular papers -- bird migration is epic, as are the researchers who study these grand movements
Huge congratulations to my mentee, Miranda Margulis-Ohnuma, for winning the @sicb-dcb-dvm.bsky.social D. Dwight Davis Award for Division of Vertebrate Morphology best student talk at this year's @sicb.bsky.social meeting! So pleased to see her creativity recognized 🐍
sicb.org/sicb-news/co...
bird people - what are some cool recent papers on migration?
(picking a paper for migration discussion in Ornithology class, I have some candidates but curious to broaden my options)
just accidentally poured a couple of dots of bird seed into my mouth while filling an elevated bird feeder. did not taste good at all, no clue why those little dudes are going so crazy for this stuff
Optical illusion of a woman bent over some papers. Her sunglasses are pushed up and she is wearing a hair band so the top of her head looks exactly like a Muppet face
Sorry I know the world is in a terrible fix but I've been laughing at this for ten minutes now
come for the first time in history that Ted Cruz and Purple Martin populations have been meaningfully linked, stay for the spectacular paper. Well done team!
1/ Remember when Ted Cruz went to Cancún as the Texas power grid failed? It wasn't just the people of TX left behind, it was also the wildlife. Out now @natecoevo.nature.com, our paper led by @mstager.bsky.social & @treeswallows.bsky.social documents how bad the storms were for birds.
rdcu.be/e7aUy
In parts of rural Rwanda, nearly three out of four pediatric health clinic visits end with an antibiotic prescription.
A new digital tool cut that down to just 25%, without compromising patient outcomes. Could it help slow the spread of antimicrobial resistance?
www.npr.org/2026/03/05/n...
Oregon Senate Passes Bipartisan Measure Investing in the State’s Natural Environment and Wildlife House Bill 4134 relies on taxes paid by visitors in hotels, motels, and other vacation stays SALEM, OR – The same gorgeous landscapes that draw tourists to our state will get new investments funded by those visitors under legislation passed today in the Oregon Senate. A tax on hotels, motels, and vacation stays will help pay for wildfire resilience, invasive-species eradication, wildlife conservation, and prevention of poaching. The broadly supported, bipartisan measure helps reverse decades of underfunding for protection of fish and wildlife.
INBOX: The Oregon Senate passed the 1.25 Percent for Wildlife bill, which will raise the state’s lodging tax by 1.25 percent to fund wildlife conservation programs, mostly through the Dept of Fish and Wildlife. This has been a long time in the making.
Excited to see this analysis based on AVONET & AVOTREX bird trait data.
Do bird radiations tend to avoid regions of trait space already occupied by other lineages? This analysis suggests the answer is yes!
The "Birds The Don't Exist" actually do exist, just in related passerine clades.
Is this the biggest ever single species count on eBird? Gobsmacking photos of an estimated 2.75M Snow Geese in North Dakota (HT @evornithology.bsky.social)
ebird.org/checklist/S2...
fantastic paper by @kimholzmann.bsky.social & colleagues presenting data on ~2300 insect species along two tropical mountain slopes
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
@westernu.ca did a write up on our new paper! Forgive me for being proud of this contribution. ☺️
news.westernu.ca/2026/03/rain...
#ornithology #birds #meta-analysis #rain
requiem for vanished birdsong
When someone says „Scientists do not want you to know“ you can dismiss everything from there on. Scientists want you to know. They are desperate that you know. They can’t shut up about what they found out and want you to know.
Ok. We the world are up to 125. Tomorrow I start activating collaborators here in Ecuador.
"I needed to see them to remember what my own species is capable of...to be reminded that we nearly killed something miraculous — and then, almost unbelievably, we didn’t."
lovely piece by Margaret Renkl
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/o...
David Marques was an amazing speciation genomics researcher, a passionate birder, and a wonderful friend, husband, and father. May he rest in peace. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Well this is fcking crazy. Work from @msbbirds.bsky.social and others found that Black Metaltail hummingbirds can drop their body temperature down to 3 °C (37 °F) during torpor. 🤯 Turns out birds aren't warm-blooded after all! royalsocietypublishing.org/rsbl/article...
📷 Steve Juhasz
On a mini-mission to get enough recordings of Pacific Hornero into the @cornellbirds.bsky.social's Macaulay Library that we can add it to the Merlin sound ID model. Getting after it with phones, a parabola and, most importantly, encouraging others to do the same! macaulaylibrary.org/asset/651775...
An historic black and white illustration of a paper nautilus floating on the ocean. There are boats, a city and hills in the background.
🎉 Huge news for BHL: The Field Museum is taking over the hosting of BHL’s website, servers & infrastructure, ensuring long-term stability and access for its 63+ million pages of open biodiversity literature. Learn more:
blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2026/02/tran...
#BHLTransition #ILoveBHL 🌍 📚 🧪
tropical lowland birds aren't doing well -- this is an excellent article on what's happening featuring a slew of fantastic research projects
www.science.org/content/arti...
(scary too)
amazing paper congrats!!!
Thrilled to share our new paper out in @science.org, led by François Leroy and Petr Keil! Using the Breeding Bird Survey, we document not only a continent-wide decline in bird abundance since the 1980s — but, crucially, the acceleration of these declines over time. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
