A four panel comic. In panel 1, there's an image of a closeup on the head of a yellow morph timber rattlesnake, with text above it that says "Behold the snake: Cunning, cruel, and bloodthirsty, it embodies evil and sin. Who knows what malevolent thoughts lurk in its mind?" In panel 2, the snake is zoomed out slightly, and a thought bubble rises above its head with three dots inside it. In panel 3, we're zoomed out more to see the whole snake curled up on a rock with a colorful background behind it, and there's a thought bubble rising from its head that says "Mmm warm sun." In panel 4, we're zoomed out even more, and the snake is sitting on a rock at the top of a hill with green grass and trees, a vibrant background of mountains and lakes behind it, and a bright blue sky with a golden cloud and birds flying. The snake is thinking "Nice day."

Behold the snake.

Environmental Variability Shapes Life‐History Trade‐Offs Within and Between Populations of a Long‐Lived Seabird Life-history theory predicts a trade-off between allocation of resources to reproduction or self-maintenance, yet how environmental variability shapes this trade-off remains poorly understood. We sho...

📃New paper in Ecology letters 🐦
I’m delighted to share the publication of the first paper from my #postdoc with @samanthacpatrick.bsky.social looking at life-history trade-offs and #senescence in black-browed #albatrosses from Kerguelen and Bird Island
doi.org/10.1111/ele.70384

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ko-fi.com/tyrannonoddy Expenses are REALLY kicking my ass this week, and I need enough to be able to afford rent. If you can spare anything, it's appreciated. I'm even happy to be commissioned something to write for you.

Fossilized skeleton of a bird-like dinosaur preserved on top of a nest of eggs.

New specimen of the oviraptorid dinosaur Huanansaurus preserved on top of a nest: academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/a... Corythoraptor is reinterpreted as being the same species. 🪶🧪 (📷Hao & Xu)

An illustration of a group of five Chinese Paddlefish. They swim near a silty river bottom, the water a greenish aqua. Rays of sun filter through the choppy water surface, illuminating the backs of the fish. Two fish are in the foreground, around the viewer's eye level; one fish is closer to the water's surface, nearly silhouetted against the reflected sky; and two fish are in the background, blurry and void of detail. The fish are swimming toward the right, with the lower left corner of the illustration fading into black. Chinese Paddlefish were declared extinct in 2020.

On this #EarthDay, let us also remember the species that are no longer with us 🐡

#ChinesePaddlefish

Arsinoitherium skull with two giant horns

We’re looking for researchers in any discipline of natural history: if you have a paper coming out and you want to pitch @pbseons.bsky.social on a potential episode about it, send me a DM! #scicomm #paleosky #FossilFriday

(Arsinoitherium says please and thank you!)

Name use by companion parrots Humans organize social interactions in part by referring to others using proper names (hereafter “names”). Names might also facilitate the complex social lives of animals. Several animal species produ...

Can parrots 🦜 learn the names of people and animals they live with? Yes. Do they use them correctly? Sometimes.

Read more about how parrots of many species use names in our recently published article: dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour... @viktoriagroiss.bsky.social
@chris-birdnerd.bsky.social #parrots

Diagram showing hypothesized life history and ecological relationships of the bird-like dinosaur Archaeopteryx.

Review of the ecology of Archaeopteryx: link.springer.com/article/10.1... 🪶🧪 (📷NICE PaleoVisLab studio & Samantha Clark)

Question for researchers in #ecology & #evolution: What are your favorite slightly-more-niche topics? What do you wish you could nerd out on with members of the general public without having to catch them up on the most basic stuff? What would thrill you to hear a movie scientist bring up? #EcoEvo

In memoriam: Hans-Dieter Sues (1956–2026) Published in Historical Biology: An International Journal of Paleobiology (Ahead of Print, 2026)

My obituary of the highly accomplished and brilliant Professor Hans-Dieter Sues (1956-2026) is now online, let me know if you want a pdf... www.tandfonline.com/eprint/NICGG...

CIPRES is shutting down at the end of June: www.phylo.org .

It's been such a good resource for the phylogenetics community. Thanks to #NSF and Simons for funding it and for all the people who have worked to grow and sustain this for so long.

Diagram showing genetic differences among moa sampled from different parts of New Zealand.

Genetic and morphometric variation in Euryapteryx moa: academic.oup.com/biolinnean/a... 🪶🧪 (📷Holdaway et al.)

Currently playing out on the slopes of Lord Howe Is. Made famous by Attenborough’s filming of ‘birds falling from the sky’. Providence petrels in courtship clashes. #SuperSeabirdSunday.

‘Dartford Warbler male’

gouache, 19 x 23 cms

In Spring this usually furtive species becomes easier to see as males sing from a prominent perch in their heathland habitat.
#dartfordwarbler#warbler#birdart#birdpainting#heathland

Welcome to Super Seabird Sunday where we ask you to share photos, videos & artwork of seabirds to brighten timelines. Here are two Puffins ‘billing’ a behaviour which is seen at this time of year to strengthen pair bonds #SuperSeabirdSunday

A digital illustration of two velociraptors facing each other and rubbing their noses together. The background is bright orange and resemble a desert, and the velociraptors are orange, brown and white.

Another dino I didn't want to miss, it's velociraptor day!

The colors/pattern is inspired by the velociraptor in the game Paleo Pines.

2026 dinosaur prompt list:
www.tumblr.com/a-dinosaur-a...
#velociraptormongoliensis #velociraptor #dinosaur #paleoart #art

A large songbird is singing while perched on a fencepost. He has a streaked brown, black and white back, head and wings and a bright yellow neck and breast with a black "necklace". His beak is wide open and eye partially closed as he sings loudly.

Lots of western meadowlarks belting out their songs this morning.
#Alberta #wildlife #birding #birds 🪶

The Fish Doorbell — The Fish Doorbell Did you spot a fish? Press the Fish Doorbell! This alerts our lock operator to let the fish through. The Fish Doorbell is in Utrecht, NL.

🚪🔔🐟 Here’s your reminder, the Netherlands’ fish doorbell is live!

One of my favorite citizen science projects 🧪🌊

Scatterlings Of Africa YouTube video by Johnny Clegg - Topic

#Geol204playlist For the rise of the human lineage youtu.be/Q8xvaAHSsEk?...

My niche-favourite dinosaur is Shuvuuia, a small alvarezsaurid theropod from Mongolia with the characteristic weird stubby forelimbs and long legs. I love the name, and my first paper (1998) was my only one ever describing a new fossil. A Shuvuuia-like pelvis from Montana's Hell Creek Formation.

A black, white, and rust colored bird with an upturned bill flies over water.

The avocets have returned to Colorado. I love photographing these elegant, bizarre birds.

A male Downy Woodpecker snags a tasty grub from a cattail after hammering away at the husk. The Downy's small size allows them to perch on cattails which cannot support heavier woodpeckers.

The molluscivorous red knots may eat seagrass rhizomes. To examine this ability, bird were fed plant-based rabbit pellets before being reversed back to protein-rich pellets. They rapidly adjusted to eating rabbit food!
eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

#TrevorrowizeADinosaur still going strong I see... (Context: hashtag started in response to the reveal of the Jurassic World Baryonyx, which downplays all of the most distinctive features of Baryonyx.)

A diagram showing the evolutionary relationships among modern birds. The branches are color coded by the estimated likelihood of retaining ancestral character variability, with higher likelihoods in red.

A new paper I'm on is out today! Led by Stanley Somogyi, we suggest that ancestrally variable characters stabilized independently in different bird lineages, causing distantly related groups to retain similar traits and creating headaches for bird systematists. www.cell.com/current-biol... 🪶🧪

A small, black bird with a bright red crown and two extremely long, thin tail feathers perched on a horizontal tree branch against a blurred green forest background.

Long-tailed Manakin from this morning in the dry forest of #CostaRica

#birds #nature

Variation in food availability affects the population age structure of Atlantic puffins Fratercula arctica in the Faroe Islands Across their entire Atlantic breeding range, Atlantic puffins Fratercula arctica have experienced decreases in food availability, often leading to population declines. The species is one of the most ....

‼️🚨New Paper Alert! 🚨‼️

Using a decades-long dataset on puffins in the Faroe Islands, we show a change in population age structure and relate the increase in older birds/decrease in cohort sizes to (pre-)hatch year food availability.

doi.org/10.1002/wlb3...
@kasiawojczulanis.bsky.social

You observe correctly: the pubic shaft in ceratopsids is very reduced! To paraphrase @arctomet.bsky.social, “this is why you don’t show the pelvis of Triceratops while introducing undergrads to ornithischians.”

Publication seems a REALLY long way off, but do reach out if you'd like to schedule a book signing, talk, reading, podcast interview, exhibition, or any combination of the above to help get A New Unfeathered Bird off to a flying start next year.
'A celebration of all birds, across all time'.

Seriously, #EduSky, #Physics teachers, #scicomm folks, if you aren't familiar with thescienceplayground.com, you should be. Amazing collection of all kinds of science demos and games from across the web, all curated by a science game expert and, indeed, no AI!!!