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Heather Major

@heathermajor.bsky.social
430 followers 152 following 33 posts

seabird ecologist, professor

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Reposted by Heather Major
M31🍁 @m31author.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
The donation will establish the Graeme Gibson Chair in Avian Biology, a new research position at the London, Ont., school focused on understanding how birds move, behave and adapt to changing environmental conditions www.ctvnews.ca/london/artic...
ctvnews.ca
Margaret Atwood donates $1M to Western University for avian research chair
The legacy of celebrated Canadian author and bird conservation advocate Graeme Gibson will continue through a $1-million gift to Western University from his longtime partner, acclaimed author Margaret...
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Reposted by Heather Major
Erik Hoffner @erikhoffner.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
[Good news] It was a record year for razorbill & puffin breeding as the Gulf of #Maine - which has been warming faster than 99% of the ocean - sees a pause in its heating over the last couple years, @themainemonitor.org reports Common & endangered roseate terns also did well this summer:
themainemonitor.org
Seabird researchers report good year for razorbills and puffins
Seal Island saw a record 127 razorbill nests, while Eastern Egg Rock saw a record 213 puffin burrows.
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Reposted by Heather Major
Nicholas Per Huffeldt @nphuffeldt.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Bumping to the 🧪 🌍 🪶 and #Ornithology feeds Incredible amount of work by @mariemrouyer.bsky.social and 177 authors made this possible
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Reposted by Heather Major
Atlantic Laboratory for Avian Research @alar-unb.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Have you ever wondered if colourful puffin bills and feet have a function in communicating information about body condition to other puffins? Us too. 🧵1/4 🪶🧪🦑
Close-up photo of an Atlantic Puffin head, showing brightly coloured bill and rosette.
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Reposted by Heather Major
Adrift Lab (Marine Science) @adriftlab.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
In our #NewPaper, we developed a minimally invasive test to detect the hidden harm from plastic ingestion in live #seabirds. By looking at proteins in the blood, we identified a biological signature of plastic-associated damage doi.org/10.1016/j.en...
doi.org
Redirecting
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Reposted by Heather Major
Anne Ausems (she/her) @anneausems.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
Our new paper is out! #puffins #seabirds #faroeislands
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Reposted by Heather Major
Anne Ausems (she/her) @anneausems.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
#seabirds #puffins
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Reposted by Heather Major
EcoFriendly West @ecofriendlywest.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
Schools and community organizations are invited to participate in BugQuest, a national project aimed at exploring biodiversity in Canada, capturing insects through passive traps and identifying them through DNA barcoding. www.cambridgetoday.ca/local-news/u...
cambridgetoday.ca
University of Guelph researchers launch BugQuest to map Canada’s insects
They’re aiming to deploy 1,000 malaise traps across Canada to study insect biodiversity with the help of community organizations
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Reposted by Heather Major
Marine Ornithology @marineorno.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
New paper alert: Plumage aberration on a Razorbill by Danial Oliker, Tony Diamond, and @heathermajor.bsky.social. #seabirds #OpenAccess www.marineornithology.org/PDF/54_1/54_...
Razorbill Alca torda with an unfamiliar plumage phenotype during banding and morphometric processing at Machias Seal Island, New Brunswick, Canada
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Reposted by Heather Major
David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈 @whysharksmatter.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
Thousands of seabirds dying on western Europe’s coasts Puffins, guillemots and razorbills are being washed up dead or dying on Europe’s Atlantic coast in what scientists call a ‘wreck’ www.theguardian.com/news/2026/ma... 🦑 🧪 🌍️
theguardian.com
Thousands of seabirds dying on western Europe’s coasts
Puffins, guillemots and razorbills are being washed up dead or dying on Europe’s Atlantic coast in what scientists call a ‘wreck’
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Reposted by Heather Major
Ioannis Kalaitzakis @ioannis-kalaitz.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
Extremely happy that my Master's thesis is published! Thank you @mariemrouyer.bsky.social and @ana-sl-rodrigues.bsky.social for your guidance, as well as thanks to all the co-authors!
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Reposted by Heather Major
Atlantic Laboratory for Avian Research @alar-unb.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
New paper from PhD candidate Sarah Durham using IPMs found that "specific warming-related factors, such as summer length and winter sea surface temperature anomalies have negatively impacted ATPU (Atlantic Puffin) and RAZO (Razorbill) demographic rates". 🪶🧪🦑 doi.org/10.1111/gcb....
doi.org
Signals From the Southern Edge: Demographic Effects of Ocean Warming on Two Cold‐Adapted Seabird Species in the Gulf of Maine
We used integrated population models to analyze environmental drivers of population dynamics for Atlantic Puffins (Fratercula arctica) and Razorbills (Alca torda) nesting at the southern edge of thei...
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Reposted by Heather Major
Prof Ian Hall @ianhall.bsky.social · 08/03/2026
Another blow to climate science: budget cuts at Environment and Climate Change Canada threaten long-running Arctic monitoring programs, some with >50-year datasets. The Arctic is warming ~4× faster than the global average. Cutting the science that tracks is… theconversation.com/budget-cuts-...
theconversation.com
Budget cuts at Environment and Climate Change Canada threaten Arctic science
For decades, ECCC research scientists have been integral to the work of the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme.
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Reposted by Heather Major
Atlantic Laboratory for Avian Research @alar-unb.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
Check out this blog post about ALAR graduate student Amanda's research! nsnt.ca/blog/underst...
nsnt.ca
Understanding Invasive Species on Seal Island - Nova Scotia Nature Trust
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Heather Major @heathermajor.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
Check out the newest paper from our lab! 🧪🦑🪶
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Reposted by Heather Major
UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) @ukceh.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
Warming oceans are having widespread and often negative effects on migratory seabirds, new research involving UKCEH shows. The study compared seasonal sea surface temperatures with seabird numbers to quantify effects on reproduction, survival & population trends. doi.org/10.1073/pnas... 🧪1/
doi.org
Demographic responses of North Atlantic seabirds to seasonal ocean warming | PNAS
Climate-driven ocean warming is profoundly reshaping marine ecosystems, with cascading effects on biodiversity and trophic interactions. For migrat...
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Reposted by Heather Major
SEAPOP.bsky.social @seapop.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
New large-scale study based on SEAPOP data shows that #ocean #warming threatens #seabirds in the North Atlantic @ninanatureresearch.bsky.social
seapop.no
Ocean warming threatens seabirds in the North Atlantic
Climate change is causing ocean warming, acidification and loss of sea ice. This, in turn, is leading to shifting biogeographic distribution and in some cases species extinction.
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Reposted by Heather Major
Atlantic Laboratory for Avian Research @alar-unb.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
New paper assessing the use of seabird diet data into fisheries stock assessment. We found that the integration of predator (i.e., seabird) diet data into an assessment model can improve assessment outcomes by filling in critical data gaps where appropriate. 🧪🪶🦑 doi.org/10.1016/j.fi...
doi.org
Redirecting
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Reposted by Heather Major
Communications Earth & Environment @commsearth.nature.com · 10/10/2025
🪶Diet diversity across northern hemisphere ecosystems affects seabird responses to climate change, with breeding productivity declining in the Arctic and North Atlantic but not in the Pacific from 1963 to 2020. 👉Read more here: www.nature.com/articles/s43...
nature.com
Ecosystems mediate climate impacts on northern hemisphere seabirds - Communications Earth & Environment
Diet diversity across northern hemisphere ecosystems affects seabird responses to climate change, with breeding productivity declining in the Arctic and North Atlantic but not in the Pacific from 1993 to 2019, based on 138 time series of breeding success and linear mixed effects models.
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Reposted by Heather Major
Marine Ornithology @marineorno.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
New paper!! Geolocator error decreases with an increase in the number of days of data. By @bennett-sophie.bsky.social et al. www.marineornithology.org/PDF/53_2/53_... #seabirds #OpenAccess #biologging
Data and predictions from non-linear least squares models of the relationship between the number of days with location data and
the distance between centroids derived from global location sensor loggers and platform terminal transmitters deployed on Black-browed
Albatrosses Thalassarche melanophris
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Reposted by Heather Major
Marine Ornithology @marineorno.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
New paper alert: Behavioral response of Atlantic Puffins Fratercula arctica to marine heatwaves in the Gulf of Maine, USA: A webcam study. By Julie Wallace et al. #seabirds #OpenAccess #HeatWaves www.marineornithology.org/PDF/53_2/53_...
An Atlantic puffin at the colony.
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Reposted by Heather Major
Morten Frederiksen @seabirdmortenf.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
New paper alert! How can new technologies improve seabid population monitoring? Output from a workshop at the International Seabird Group Conference in Coimbra last year. academic.oup.com/icesjms/arti...
academic.oup.com
Opportunities and challenges for new technologies in seabird population monitoring
Abstract. Monitoring of seabird population size and demography has for decades relied on observer-based methods. While such methods have allowed the accumu
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Reposted by Heather Major
Airam Rodríguez @airamrodriguez.bsky.social · 06/09/2025
New post at ecolightsforseabirds website! Pufflings navigating the lit night About a recent study by @tbrownbirds.bsky.social on the Atlantic Puffin ecolightsforseabirds.weebly.com/news/pufflin... #ornithology #seabirds
ecolightsforseabirds.weebly.com
Pufflings navigating the lit night
Each year in Newfoundland, Canada, fledgling Atlantic Puffins (“pufflings”; Fratercula arctica ) become stranded in coastal towns during their nocturnal first flights from breeding colonies on...
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Reposted by Heather Major
Dr Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
New @adriftlab.bsky.social paper in Emu-Austral Ornithology with @seabirdsentinel.bsky.social on the age of first return of Sable Shearwaters #seabirds #ornithology 🪶🧪 doi.org/10.1080/0158...
Age at first return of Sable Shearwaters (Ardenna carneipes)
By Jennifer L. Lavers and Alexander L. Bond

ABSTRACT
Long-term datasets are fundamental to the accurate estimation of demographic parameters for
long-lived species. This is particularly the case for declining species where there is an imperative to
identify which parameter(s) are driving population dynamics. Using eleven years of banding and
recapture data (2015–2025), we provide the first estimate of age at first return for a declining
population of Sable Shearwaters Ardenna carneipes on Lord Howe Island in eastern Australia. Mean
age at first return was 6.2 years, which is among the longest pre-breeding period reported for any
shearwater. Various factors that may influence shearwater recruitment age, such as climate and
population size, are briefly discussed.

ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 3 June 2025
Accepted 23 August 2025
KEYWORDS
Banding study; demography;
life history; Procellariiformes;
recruitment; seabirds
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Heather Major @heathermajor.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
I've watched the first 5 episodes and they are great. You should watch them and if you watch the 6th you might just see me!
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Reposted by Heather Major
Dr Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
Heads up Canada folks. My mug and dulcet tones are likely to grace the CBC tomorrow, talking about the global plastics treaty, and our research in Nunatsiavut (and plastics generally)
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Reposted by Heather Major
Dino Biancolini @dinobiancolini.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
So excited to share our massive review on #alienspecies, now published! It was an honor to collaborate with a team of 65 authors on this project. We show how #biologicalinvasions are accelerating globally and what we still need to learn to halt them. 👾 #BiologicalReviews #Ecology #IPBES
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Biological invasions: a global assessment of geographic distributions, long‐term trends, and data gaps
Biological invasions are one of the major drivers of biodiversity decline and have been shown to have far-reaching consequences for society and the economy. Preventing the introduction and spread of ....
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Reposted by Heather Major
Bec Jones @jbfarthing.bsky.social · 23/07/2025
Long term monitoring is essential to understanding seabird populations - especially in the context of climate change. A 68-year study on Leach’s storm-petrels showed that survival is inversely related to the AMO index #Seabirds #Ornithology royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
royalsocietypublishing.org
Adult survival in a small seabird, Hydrobates leucorhous, covaries with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation over the past six decades | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Seabirds’ annual survival is influenced by numerous factors, but oceanic conditions are among the most significant. Indices used to monitor these conditions typically cycle over decades. Using the lon...
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Reposted by Heather Major
Atlantic Laboratory for Avian Research @alar-unb.bsky.social · 10/07/2025
MSc candidate and current field lead at Machias Seal Island spoke with Khalil Aktar on CBC Information Morning this morning about the 33-year old puffin captured on July 8th. You can listen here: www.cbc.ca/listen/live-... 🧪🦑🪶
cbc.ca
© CBC/Radio-Canada 2025. All rights reserved.
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Reposted by Heather Major
Atlantic Laboratory for Avian Research @alar-unb.bsky.social · 09/07/2025
We haven't done a full check, but we might have captured the oldest puffin on Machias Seal Island. While the longevity record for Atlantic Puffin is 45 years (from Iceland), the North American record is 33 years. Last night we captured a bird banded as a chick in 1992, making it 33!🧪🪶
33 year old puffin captured on Machias Seal Island.
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Reposted by Heather Major
Dr. Glenn Tattersall @tattersallg.bsky.social · 20/06/2025
Shape-Shifting Shorebirds: How Wing Length Is Responding to a Warming World We’re excited to share the publication of a new paper in Ecography, led by PhD candidate Sara Ryding (Deakin University, collaboration with Matt Symonds Lab), which explores how climate change may be reshaping the…
tattersalllab.com
Shape-Shifting Shorebirds: How Wing Length Is Responding to a Warming World
We’re excited to share the publication of a new paper in Ecography, led by PhD candidate Sara Ryding (Deakin University, collaboration with Matt Symonds Lab), which explores how climate change may be reshaping the morphology of migratory shorebirds. Using an incredibly extensive dataset of nearly 19,000 juvenile birds across 11 species sampled over 43 years, Sara investigated whether warming temperatures are causing changes in relative wing length, a trait thought to play a role in thermoregulation.
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Reposted by Heather Major
Atlantic Laboratory for Avian Research @alar-unb.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
After years of seeing the faded plastic band on this puffin and being unable to re-sight it, we finally re-captured it and replaced its bands. This bird was first banded as chick in 1996 making it 29 years old (!) and among the oldest in our records. 🦑🪶🧪
Atlantic Puffin legs with worn out plastic band.
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Reposted by Heather Major
BirdLife International @birdlifeglobal.bsky.social · 13/06/2025
Seabirds are our compass!🌊 Did you know the largest High Seas Marine Protected Area (MPA) outside Antarctica was identified from seabird tracking data?🌍 The NACES MPA is used by up to five million birds, such as Arctic Tern and Atlantic Puffin. Learn more👉 www.seabirdtracking.org/case-studies...
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Reposted by Heather Major
Atlantic Laboratory for Avian Research @alar-unb.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
Weather is getting warmer and our work is ramping up. First puffin chicks hatched this weekend! The colony is noisy with the peeps of chicks (some being described as sounding like tea kettles). 🦑🪶🐧🧪
Newly hatched Atlantic Puffin chick
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Reposted by Heather Major
Steffen Oppel @steffopp.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
NEW PAPER relevant for #ornithology provides guidance how to interpret #bioacoustics indices to characterize populations such as #seabirds. Paper is here: buff.ly/phErViS ShinyApp is here: buff.ly/IechtSX
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Reposted by Heather Major
Atlantic Laboratory for Avian Research @alar-unb.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
First Razorbill chicks have hatched! This is a little later than the last three years (first chicks hatched in the last week of May), right on the average for the last 10 years, and a full 2 weeks earlier than 1995-2004! 🪶🦑
Newly hatched Razorbill chick
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Reposted by Heather Major
David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈 @whysharksmatter.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
Systematic assessment of the increasing presence of white sharks in Atlantic Canadian waters www.int-res.com/abstracts/me...
int-res.com
Systematic assessment of the increasing presence of white sharks in Atlantic Canadian waters
This study presents the first systematic assessment of trends in white shark Carcharodon carcharias presence in Atlantic Canadian waters (ACWs) using 2 standardized acoustic monitoring...
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Reposted by Heather Major
David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈 @whysharksmatter.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
Expanded Marine Protections Around South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands Take Effect Major move will help region’s rich biodiversity: Almost half a million square kilometers of ocean is now closed to fishing www.pew-bertarelli-ocean-legacy.org/en/research-... 🦑🧪🌎
pew-bertarelli-ocean-legacy.org
Expanded Marine Protections Around South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands Take Effect
On April 22, the Government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, a U.K. overseas territory, officially enacted a strengthened set of protections for its vast marine protected area (MPA). F...
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Reposted by Heather Major
Atlantic Laboratory for Avian Research @alar-unb.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
Another week has flown by, highlights include warbler fallout (!), resightings, adult puffin and razorbill banding, getting our last research blind built (its a bit wonky but safe and will work for the time being), and the start of tourist season. 🦑🪶
Warblers flying in the light of a lighthouse.
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Reposted by Heather Major
Michelle Wille @duckswabber.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
Excellent, epic review of HPAI H5N1! 👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Heather Major @heathermajor.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
🦑🧪
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Reposted by Heather Major
Atlantic Laboratory for Avian Research @alar-unb.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
Week one is done! Our first week was spent getting things set-up and training/orienting new crew members. We've also been banding adult puffins and Razorbills, checking our productivity nests, and re-sighting. If that's not enough we retrieved our first GLS logger of the season! 🐧🦑🧪
Checking productivity nests.Band combination on legs of an Atlantic PuffinBanding an adult Razorbill
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Heather Major @heathermajor.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
Deployed the Machias Seal Island crew yesterday. Looking forward to a great summer of field research focused on responses to seabirds to ocean warming. 🐧🧪🦑
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Reposted by Heather Major
raphael-lavoie-ec.bsky.social @raphael-lavoie-ec.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
Here is our latest paper on plastic debris in herring gulls in the St. Lawrence led by Sofia Higgs. We found that plastic occurrence is linked to breeding stage. Thanks to Christina Petalas, @movementecology.bsky.social and Jennifer Provencher authors.elsevier.com/a/1k%7EHn,as...
authors.elsevier.com
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Reposted by Heather Major
Flavia Montano-Centellas @flamontano.bsky.social · 03/05/2025
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
journals.plos.org
The end of long-term ecological data?
Can we ever have too much ecological field data? Are data sharing norms and the environmental costs of travel disincentivizing its collection? This Perspective advocates for proper funding and resourc...
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Reposted by Heather Major
Antoine Stier @antoinestier.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
Please share: (competitive) PhD funding in Strasbourg (France) to work on 🐧🔥: Physiological and reproductive consequences of ‘warm’ environmental conditions on land in a sub-polar penguin species Fieldwork in Crozet 🇹🇫 is forecasted (pending on HPAI situation) amethis3.unistra.fr/amethis-clie...
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Reposted by Heather Major
Atlantic Laboratory for Avian Research @alar-unb.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
I want to take a minute and highlight the non-academic work that graduate students in ALAR are helping to organize and lead. We are so lucky to have you as part of our lab and community. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
cbc.ca
'Free store' in Saint John fully stocked thanks to community support | CBC News
People in Saint John New Brunswick lined up outside a church to go shopping on Saturday, but they didn't have to worry about price tags.
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Reposted by Heather Major
British Ornithologists’ Union (BOU) @bou.org.uk · 28/03/2025
Stable isotopes reveal synchronous primary flight feather moult pattern of Atlantic Puffins (Fratercula arctica) | link.springer.com/ar... | Journal of Ornithology | #ornithology #seabirds 🪶
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Atlantic Laboratory for Avian Research @alar-unb.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
Our new paper (early view out now!) details an unexpected triangular pattern of migration for Crested Auklets. 95% of our tagged birds spent time in the Chukchi Sea and Sea of Okhotsk before returning to their nesting site. Is it time to re-write the distribution maps? 🧪🐧🦑 doi.org/10.1093/orni...
doi.org
Conservation implications of wide-ranging year-round movement and distribution of Aleutian Island breeding Aethia cristatella (Crested Auklets)
Abstract. Despite representing a crucial conservation concern, challenges in measuring seabird movement outside the breeding season remain. Among Alcidae,
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Reposted by Heather Major
The Seabird Group @theseabirdgroup.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
New paper on #Puffling growth rate models in Journal of Marine Ornithology @marineorno.bsky.social 🐧📏 (Photo: Bob Shand) - www.marineornithology.org/article?rn=1...
A picture of a puffling in the hand
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