Resource abundance can buffer trophic mismatch in a caterpillar-passerine food-chain

doi.org/10.32942/X2K...

📊 @rsturner.bsky.social
📸 @rsturner.bsky.social & @siennarattigan.bsky.social

Plot showing the cumulative percentage of trees in first budburst and first leaf across the Phenoweb Transect since 1 April 2026. Orange line shows southern sites, while the blue line shows northern sites. The black line represents the transect-wide trend.

Oak budburst.

Sycamore budburst.

Beech budburst.

Spring is gaining momentum across Scotland. 🌱

Cumulative budburst across the transect has now passed 40%, driven by a surge of activity at our northern sites in recent days. While the North is waking up, the South continues to lead the way in terms of first leaf emergence.

#Phenology #Spring2026

#phenology #ornithology #bluetit #spring #ukbirding

📷 @siennarattigan.bsky.social
📊 @rsturner.bsky.social

One blue tit egg in a cozy looking nest lined with feathers.

Plot showing the first egg date recorded for the project between 2014 and 2026.

The first egg for the 13th year of data collection along the Phenoweb Transect was laid on 12th April 2026! Looking like we’re in for a fairly ‘average‘ year up here in Scotland, with nest building and budburst progressing slightly slower than in 2025, especially in the North of the transect🪺🌳

A snowy mountain scene taken in the northern Cairngorms on 5 April 2026.

Woodcrete nest box hanging from a snow-covered tree.

Woodcrete nest box hanging from a tree, with a snowy landscape in the background.

The first week of the 2026 field season is underway, and Storm Dave has provided a chilly – but atmospheric – start. ❄️🏔

63 blue tit nests initiated, so far, with 4 lined. Looking like a later start for us compared to elsewhere in the UK/Western Europe.

#phenology

⭐ @siennarattigan.bsky.social
📷 @rsturner.bsky.social

Soprano Project | IOT | Information Services Soprano is a complete end-to-end digital AI acoustics platform, from sensor device to cloud-hosted web portal, providing automated continuous real-time remote biodiversity and related environmental mo...

For more info visit information-services.ed.ac.uk/iot/soprano-...

Fieldworker kneeling on the ground helping to install the Soprano device as it snows.

Two Soprano devices stood next to each other in the field. They consist of a solar panel, battery, circuit board, audio moth and antenna all mounted onto a tripod.

Ahead of this year’s field season, we’ve been busy installing SOPRANO devices at several of our sites. These devices automatically monitor biodiversity and climate, continuously recording birds and bats and sending real-time species identifications back to Edinburgh!🔈🐦‍⬛🦇

This week's EGI seminar in @biology.ox.ac.uk will be given by Dr Kirsty MacPhie from @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social on the contrasting insights to be drawn from studies of phenology in @phenoweb.bsky.social and @rumdeerresearch.bsky.social. Usual time and place - details below with streaming info ⬇️

Examples of some recent papers from graduate students in my group - a full list of recent papers and preprints can be found here (https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=pTdxVdIAAAAJ) and profile of the group here: https://egioxford.web.ox.ac.uk/members

The annual Wytham Field Team Photo!

Celebrating a successful field season with great food & good company - May 2025

Front view of the Life & Mind Building, which opened in Oct 2025: The new home of Biology at Oxford

Interested in a PhD in ornithology? Funding available for projects at the interface of ecology, behaviour & evolution from Oct '26 working on long-term population studies of tits at Wytham, based in @biology.ox.ac.uk in the new Life & Mind Building in Oxford
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

The first of our blue tits successfully fledged last week! And, many more nestlings are ready to go — won’t be long now!

#ukbirding #phenology #ornithology #birds

Great - thank you. Hope your season is going well in Wytham.

2 photos of a tit nest The first picture is of some great tits and two blue tits in a nest box. One blue tit is far left with head down, the other top right corner looking at the camera. The rest of the birds are great tits. The second picture is a close of the blue tit chick looking sheepish

Freeze frame. Record scratch. You might but wondering how I got here.

The eagled eyed among you might notice that there are 2 blue tits in amongst this brood of great tits.
Mini 🧵

Do you know how much heavier they tend to be around fledging compared to blue tits reared by blue tit parents?

✨ New study ✨

📍 Phenoweb, United Kingdom
👷 Ally Phillimore (@phenoweb.bsky.social)
🏦 University of Edinburgh
🐦 Blue tit
🔗 nioo.knaw.nl/en/projects/...
📑 metadata only

The change in date of the first oak leaf. Black points represent the mean (+/- SE) first oak leaf date in each year, across all oak trees studied on our transect across Scotland (with day 1 equal to the 1 April). The light grey points represent the first oak leaf date for individual trees. The regression line represents the estimated mean (+/- 95% CI).

Although we're still collecting this year's data, 2025 is shaping up to be a record-early year for first leaf emergence among many of our studied tree species — including oaks! 🌳

#phenology 🍃

One of our Field Assistants, Charlotte, checking on the progress of a blue tit nest inside of a woodcrete nest box that is attached to a tree. Photo: Megan Thompson

A clutch of 7 blue tit eggs in a nest in a woodcrete nest box. Photo: Ally Phillimore

Happy Easter weekend to all who celebrate!

While you're out hunting for chocolate eggs, our team is busy monitoring the breeding progress of our blue tits. 🪺

As of today, we have eggs in 73 nests, with several females already incubating. In contrast, on this day last year, only 2 nests had eggs!

A plot the date of the first great tit egg on Vlieland against year showing 2025 is the third-earliest year since 1955.

Last year I posted too early and had to retract my post 🫣, but now that all @niooknaw.bsky.social @animalecol-nioo.bsky.social nest boxes on #Vlieland have been checked, we know for sure that it is - yet again - a very early start of the breeding season! @uniexecec.bsky.social @sevans.bsky.social

They're back! The first three terns arrived yesterday morning. The very first one was 18-year old Calimero. He was followed by 7-year old Severina and 13-year old Fabrice. All arived between 10:29 and 10:54. ♥️ #phenology #seabirds

Proud mum to 936 hungry winter moth caterpillars 🐛 with 500 more on the way! Wish me luck

First Blue tit egg at East Dartmoor was April 4 2025. There are 3 earlier lay dates since mid-1950s, all in 2019. Probably about 1 in 8 pairs have started laying - much the same pattern as in 2019. Suggests we can expect first Pied Flycatcher eggs 2 weeks from now. #phenology

Yeah, March 4th is incredible. Was it an outlier, or were other birds soon after?

It's an incredible honour to be awarded the John C. Marsden medal from the @linneansociety.bsky.social for my PhD research on phenology, moths... and some very hungry caterpillars 🌳🐛

Thanks to all my friends and mentors at @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social, but especially @allyphillimore.bsky.social!

@egioxford.bsky.social in this instance, the nest box is just next to a horse paddock!

A single blue tit egg in a nest inside a woodcrete nest box.

The change in date of the first blue tit egg in the Phenoweb project population. Black points represent the mean (+/- SE) first egg date in each year, across all sites on our transect (with day 1 equal to the 1 April). The light grey points represent the first egg date at each individual site. The regression line represents the estimated mean (+/- 95% CI) and is fitted through data from 2014-2024. The red point represents the date of our first egg found in the current 2025 season.

And we're off! Our first blue tit egg was laid on 3 April 2025 - making this, by some margin, the earliest start to a season in the 12 years of our project! 🪺

#phenology #ukbirding #ornithology 🪶

A single Blue Tit egg in a complete nest inside a woodcrete nestbox in Wytham Woods, 3 April 2025

Early developing Oak in Wytham Woods, Oxfordshire, April 2025

Newly emerged Oak leaves, Wytham Woods, near Oxford, 3 April 2025

Figures showing the change in the date of the first egg in the Great Tit and Blue Tit populations at Wytham Woods, near Oxford 1960-2025, and the relationship between average March daily maximum temperature and date of the first egg in the population for each species. In each figure the line fitted is for the data for the 65 years from 1960-2024, with the value for 2025 shown as a green (Great Tit) or blue (Blue Tit) star. The two right hand panels compare the change over time and the response to March temperature in the two species; Great Tits show a slightly steeper response to temperature than Blue Tits, and are advancing the population first egg date slightly more quickly.

The first eggs have been laid in this, the 79th year of data collection in the Wytham Tit Project! First Blue Tit egg laid 2 April, first Great Tit 3 April. Looks like an early spring, with first oak leaves out, though the observed first egg dates fit the long-term pattern well
wythamtits.com#intro

Looks like being a very early spring for us. We already have over 60 blue tit nests and didn’t reach similar numbers ‘til around April 10th last year. This sycamore is already in leaf, and last year it didn’t reach a similar stage for another three weeks. When will we get our first eggs?