@msbbirds
Prof & Curator @UNM, Museum of Southwestern Biology NM Game Commissioner Studies: bird ecology, evolution, genetics, physiology, biogeography, & toxicology Enjoys: Birding, hunting, fishing, running Personal account, not representing UNM or State of NM
The world may be falling apart, but at least we've got this incredible live-stream of a pair of ernesti subspecies Peregrine Falcons and their 4 chicks nesting in the middle of downtown Singapore.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHBU...
Grosbeak Weaver, Kisoro, Uganda markscheflen.com #weavers #birdsofafrica #grosbeaks #birdsseenin2026 #bitdsofeastafrica #kisoro #seedeaters. #biodiversity #conservationphotography #grosbeakweavers
Awful reading about concentration camp conditions. It’s currently closed to visitors due to a measles outbreak—WaPo has reported it may close completely but it hasn’t yet. Starvation, suicide, restricted healthcare, but also “detainees only see sunlight during brief outings once or twice a week”
Do you want somebody to blame? Start with Russell Vought at OMB, Jay Bhattacharya, Matthew Memoli, Jon Lorsch at NIH. These are evil, small minded men. I hope one day they’re held accountable for the destruction of biomedical research in the United States.
SHOULD THE U.S BLOT OUT THE SUN AND USHER IN AN AGE OF ETERNAL DARKNESS? - Gallup 2/20/26-3/5/26
NO - 41%
YES - 38%
UNSURE - 21%
Want a reliable way to tell the two cryptic giant hummingbird species apart while birding in the Andes? Use your ear! 🎶 In a new @fieldornith.bsky.social J. Field Ornithology paper, we show how their vocalizations differ clearly—making sound a slam dunk for identifying them in the field.
*malicious and deliberate
"She could be dead by now." A doctor in Chicago hasn't seen his 10-year-old HIV-positive patient — living in a car with her mother — since ICE raids scared her family away from the clinic. This is what the rollback of public health looks like in practice.
The point is to destroy the administrative state, centers of knowledge and all civic institutions that stand in the way of Russell Vought’s vision of an authoritarian theocracy. It sounds insane and something out of Atwood. But this is where we are. Under his eye.
Sorry but the moral of the story is that, be you Anthropic, NSF, a Ivy university, a doctor, a cop, doesn’t matter if you do 95% of what these people tell you in the hope you get to save the other 5% of your ethics, or your dignity, or your funding. They’ll steamroll you anyway until full compliance
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
And here is some of the amazing news coverage of our paper. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/c... by @catrineinhorn.bsky.social
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...
How do they look in the mirror every morning?
the party that wants to require ID to vote abruptly invalidating a thousand people’s IDs overnight seems like a pretty giant flashing red light
Hard hitting environmental journalist Ted Williams turns a bright light on the State of Utah’s Orwellian mountain lion “management” program
And as Williams documents, in true Orwellian fashion, Utah uses doublespeak to justify their BS actions
yellowstonian.org/ted-williams...
And if we’re going to talk about the head, let’s dig into the mechanics of #2026MMM. Randall Monroe of @xkcd very accurately and unintentionally summed up the heart of MMM thusly:
Can u please film a psa about this? (“In the arms of the angel… 🎶🎶🎶)
Dont go chasing nutcrackers🎶
Many trans people in Kansas lost their driver’s licenses overnight and now can’t legally drive until they get a new one with a marker that doesn’t reflect their gender identity amp.kansascity.com/news/politic...
It looks like an sql problem
Jim O'Neill, former hedge fund and venture capital firm manager, is expected to be nominated as the next Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Would be the first NSF Director without a background as a scientist or engineer or formal research credentials.
If humans evolved from monkey, why monkeys do not turn into humans now? Currently, they don't, but in the past there were more experiments which lead to the convergent bipedalism in the monkey clade besides hominids. Plio-Pleistocene was the generator time.
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio
The more than 3 million people applying each year for immigration status changes — such as seeking work or travel authorization, a green card, or citizenship — will now be required to give the government their social media handles. In some cases, they must also provide the handles of their young children, spouses, and parents, many of whom are U.S. citizens, green card holders, or are otherwise in the United States legally. The new rules will require them to submit any social media handles they have used over the past five years, whether used in a personal or professional capacity or even on behalf of an organization. This covers platforms including Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube as well as messaging services such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and GroupMe.
Well, shit. This is batshit. This is bullshit. Even *posting* that I think this is bullshit is... I can't even.
(I have a green card)
www.brennancenter.org/our-work/ana...
The plates aging more gracefully than the taxidermy… i would eat every meal off one of those gamebird plates if i could 😋
A study I led came out in Nature Cities yesterday!
We used radar to study the role that urban landscapes play in migratory bird stopover. Spoiler: birds use cities a lot, and the patterns of their use reflect social processes and the inequities embedded in them.
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
Seabirds u say? Can u recommend me some immune supplements for the next el niño?
