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Cin-Ty Lee

@cintylee.bsky.social
1.7K followers 860 following 317 posts

geologist, critical minerals, geopolitics | Rice University | Princeton Field Guides to Flycatchers of North America | OM Systems | press.princeton.edu/our-authors/lee…

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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
Long-billed Thrasher @riceuniversity.bsky.social. Epic! This bird is a fairly common resident in South Texas but to get one up in east Texas is crazy. Even more crazy is that it is with a Brown Thrasher, which shouldn’t be here in late May. May be first record of these two species mating.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 16/05/2026
every quantitative model of magma differentiation implicitly assumes that crystals form inside the magma body and reflect the evolving magma body. The evidence points to crystallization nearly all happening in cold boundary layers. If so, one's world view changes over night. Santa Claus is not real.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
Our paper on the first field-documented backcross hybrid between Black-chinned and Ruby-throated Hummingbird is out in the Texas Ornithological Society Bulletin. Based on observations on the campus of @riceuniversity.bsky.social
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
We have a new paper. This one is about generating highly differentiated, low F melts through a series of interconnected magma chambers, each undergoing only moderate crystallization (moderate F), with the effects compounding after each successive staging. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
Here is a quiz. What flycatcher is this? Photographed May 3 along the gulf coast just west of the Texas - Louisiana border.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Buff-breasted Sandpiper displaying and getting ready for breeding. These birds have been staging here for an over a week now.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
What is an idea? It’s about connecting the dots. No dots, no ideas.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
There are a lot of gatekeepers out there and you are destroying the future of the field with your lack of creativity. Do something useful. Step aside and allow the field to advance.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
Our gardens @riceuniversity.bsky.social continue to deliver. Painted bunting and summer tanager.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
Scientists that do not like to teach can never really rise to their full potential. Teaching, even elementary classes, is the path to deeper understanding.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
Two grosbeaks @riceuniversity.bsky.social a female rose breasted and an immature male blue grosbeak.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
On earth day, we are running a fundraiser for Houston Audubon for conservation of birds and to bring birds and nature to people. Please come to this all day event if u r around. we could also use your help in fundraising. You can donate to our team! houstonaudubon.app.neoncrm.com/np/clients/h...
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
I got this ecosphere 25 years ago. Algae and shrimp. The shrimp died after five years after which I took the system out of sunlight. I thought the entire system had died but today I looked at it and found this white biofilm with gas bubbles in it! Alive for twenty years! No sun.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
A massive goatsucker. Chuck-wild-widow over @riceuniversity.bsky.social today!
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
So coming as an outsider, I’m going to ask the most basic question out there that nobody seems to be able to tell me. How did Mars become so red. Obviously oxidation but by what process? Have we figured it out?
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 11/04/2026
Mulberry picking time.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
And two more swallow-tailed kites today @riceuniversity.bsky.social. Today, raptors, swallows, swifts and waders were flying overhead, going north. Even in this urban environment, migration is going on, just high in the sky.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
When resources are abundant, everyone gets along and shares.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
Swallow-tailed kite @riceuniversity.bsky.social they have arrived!
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
The European Starling is quite handsoquite handsome bird.
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Reposted by Cin-Ty Lee
Dian Ji @dianji.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
New work challenges the idea of a “wet” Moon🌙💧 Our GCA study, with Raj and @cintylee.bsky.social, shows water-rich lunar melt inclusions form via magmatic recharge, instead of requiring a wet mantle! The Moon may still be strongly volatile-depleted. @riceeeps.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.gc...
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
Two yellow birds at @riceuniversity.bsky.social. A hooded and a Prothonotary Warbler. Both breed in the hardwood or bottomland forests of southeastern North America so the are typically the first to arrive.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 29/03/2026
I laid some boards down in our flood control @riceuniversity.bsky.social area hoping one day I’d find a narrow mouthed toad (really a frog) underneath. I hear them but these are tough frogs to actually see. Today, after many years, I found one!! What a beautiful but weird looking frog!
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
arclogite sample from the Sierra Nevada, California. These are deep arc cumulates. I got started on these rocks when I was an undergrad... they have taken me down many many paths. But above all, they are just pretty to look at.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
Long-tailed Skipper @riceuniversity.bsky.social
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Promachus hinei, a robber fly. These are indeed flies, but they are quite the predator. I have seen them take down dragonflies much larger than itself. But besides what they do, they are just beautiful creatures.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
An Arabesque Orbweaver with dew on its web.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
Spring is here. Black-and-white warbler @riceuniversity today. That plant on the left is known as “ball moss” but it’s not a moss. It’s a bromeliad, like pineapples. These epiphytes host a number of insects so the birds are often seen probing them.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
Our first of season scissor-tailed flycatcher @riceuniversity.bsky.social flew over while we were hawkwatching. Spring is here. This bird was moving north very fast but we managed to get a couple of photos as it passed overhead.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
Rufous-tailed jacamar from Honduras. They are in the Piciformes order, which contains puffbirds, woodpeckers, and toucans. They feed on insects by catching them in flight from exposed perched.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
A red-throated loon and a western grebe turned up in Galveston, Texas. Both very rare birds this far east, but somehow they were together for a brief moment in time.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
The Honduran Emerald. A hummingbird endemic to the dry interior mountains of Honduras and the Chortis block.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
Red-legged Honeycreepers. Honduras. They are a type of tanager. They feed on flowers and fruits, and like hummingbirds, they have a long tongue for probing into flowers. The vivid blue color is not from pigments but is a structural color, where nanostructures in the feathers scatter blue light.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
@edyong209.bsky.social and I just had an amazing view of Buff-breasted Flycatchers and a Guatemalan Northern Pygmy Owl in the mountains of Honduras.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
Stellar’s Jay from the mountains of Honduras. These look and sound different from those in North America. Seems like every mountain range has its own variant of Stellar’s Jay.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
San Francisco volcanic field near Flagstaff on the Colorado Plateau, Arizona. Cinder cones formed by Strombolian eruptions. These volcanoes are so young (ky) that they have hardly eroded.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
Ubehebe crater. A phreatomagmatic eruption, where magmas impinge upon wet sediment or groundwater causing rapid vaporization. Volume expansion during vaporization causes the water saturated overburden (roof) to explode. Sudden depressurization causes magma to then erupt catastrophically.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
Pleistocene cinder cone in the southern part of the Owens Valley. Coso volcanic field.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
Anna’s Hummingbird in the Mojave desert they are curious birds.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
Last year, my kid discovered one of very few Pinguiculas ever in the country of Belize. Their closest relatives seem to be from the cloud forests of southeastern Mexico, but they look different. The Maya Mountains. We are just now putting all our observations together!
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
Boat-tailed Grackles eating crayfish. That’s why they like marshes.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
More hybrids. Today on the Texas coast. FulvousxBlack-bellied Whistling Duck. The barred rump is particularly intriguing.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
be very careful of folks that throw around the word "sustainability" too much. What used to be a good word has been hijacked by careerists looking out for their own good. The only thing they are trying to sustain is their own job. Environment is second priority.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
One of the most fascinating sagas I've experienced. We recently found what we thought was a typical Black-chinned Hummingbird @riceuniversity.bsky.social but after more photos came in, it became clear we were looking at a hybrid Ruby-throated x Black-chinned, one of few ever documented in the field.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
One of the most bizarre conversations I had today. A gentleman came up to me tell me he had a stuffed passenger pigeon and wanted to know what to do with it. And indeed he has a stuffed passenger pigeon
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
First year students at @riceuniversity.bsky.social have to take a writing class. With AI, teaching these writing classes has become challenging but we focus on nature journaling and relearning how to observe and then communicating our observations thru words and sketches. We beat AI everyday.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
I don’t know why this bird in the middle never changes its position n
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
My local rufous hummingbird before sunrise, sitting in the freezing cold. These little guys somehow produce enough heat to make it through the sun-zero temperatures. Even the bill is warm! Thermal imaging scope.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
Myiarchus flycatchers ordered by size and intensity of yellow underparts. When it comes to flycatchers, differences between species tend to be very subtle. Impressions of size and color in the field can be quite subjective, but the differences are real.
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Cin-Ty Lee @cintylee.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
Jan and Feb are typically when we get the strongest cold fronts along the Gulf of Mexico. These fronts push their way down and bring odd birds. This California Gull showed up today just outside of Houston, TX.
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