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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring

@hejblames.bsky.social
31 followers 17 following 28 posts

We are the ~50-year-old avian ecology project started in 1979 on the island Gotland 🇵🇱🇸🇪🪺. Every year we follow several hundred breeding pairs of blue tits and collared flycatchers in our nest boxes. Follow us for news and related winged miscellany.

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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
in the winter. Flycatchers seem to have taken advantage of reduced competition as also great tits noted a30-40% drop in breeding pairs (100 pairs more of the collared flycatcher). Let’s hope it was just a fluctuation and significantly colder winter… last pic - a ringed tree pipit found in our plot;)
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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
The number of breeding BT pairs dropped by 50% (sic! ~90-100 broods fewer!) Many broods are clearly attended by 1 parent, and we’ve noted almost a 100% drop in the number of recruits (1-2% of recruited 2nd yrs instead of the usual 20-30%). Our Swedish friends also reported almost no BTs in feeders
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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
Day 68 of the 47th # Gotland season! After some May showers Gotland returned with dazzling sunny weather :) first flycatchers started to hatch, but this years weird. The blue tit population was hit hard by blåmessjuka („blue tit disease”) caused by Corynebacteria - Suttonella ornithocola.
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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
But the good news is - blue tits are using our artificial feathers in their nest decorations, it’s the first year of the experiment so stay tuned in a year for the next steps! @ncn.gov.pl @jagiellonskiuni.bsky.social #gotland #birds #collaredflycatcher
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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
Day 49: the season is ramping up really slowly… Tits started laying eggs very late and in two bouts (below blue tit data) and flycatchers - well, they started on the 11th but then most females decided to wait ;)
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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
As always - this would not be possible without the support of @ncn.gov.pl @jagiellonskiuni.bsky.social
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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
only a few dozen starting nests and only 1 with eggs!) This year we continue with the behavioral experiment on blue tits - testing their choice of feather decorations they add to their nests. Stay tuned for news and updates:)
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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Day 22 of the 26th Gotland season! We started on the 14th of April - it’s a surprisingly odd spring here in #Gotland. Exceptionally early arrivals of warblers (chiffchaff, willow warbler and blackcap already gear on the 18th) and exceptionally late for hole nesters (it’s past the 20th and we have
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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 11/09/2025
We’re at @hnbirds2025.bsky.social in Olomouc :) tits rule the talks so far - second photo = @szymekdr.bsky.social presenting work on blue tits and steroid hormones.
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Erik Postma @erikpostma.bsky.social · 22/08/2025
With #eseb2025 coming to a close, it is time to start making plans for 2026. Interested in the interface of evolution 🧬 and ecology 🌳? Come to our #ExE conference hosted by @uniexecec.bsky.social in beautiful #Cornwall. Leave your email address at tinyurl.com/EvolxEcol to join our mailing list!
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Institute of Environmental Sciences JU @ioes-ju.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
It's been a busy summer for our scientists. Several of them attended the #ESEB2025 conference in Barcelona.
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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 11/09/2025
Another paper from the lab, this time using very long time series of our flycatcher data.
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Narodowe Centrum Nauki @ncn.gov.pl · 27/06/2025
📢Nowe zasady open access w NCN: większa elastyczność – ta sama idea. ❗️Z dniem 26 czerwca odeszliśmy od wymogu publikowania wyłącznie w otwartym dostępie, jednak nadal rekomendujemy otwarte udostępnianie wyników badań. Szczegóły➡ ncn.gov.pl/aktualnosci/... #openaccess #projektyncn
Budynek Narodowego Centrum Nauki w Krakowie.
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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
Not much, just the usual Swedish Midsommar WEATHER DISASTER 🫣 stormy winds, cold showers and apparent temp close to 5 degrees C. Luckily most of our flycatcher broods managed to fledge, fingers crossed for all of them to make out of the island in August;)
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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 20/06/2025
Trevlig midsommar ;)
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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
Some stats: team size at the peak - 10, cars - max 8, rings used - 3476 and counting ;)
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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
Nestlings from a blue tit clutch with an unexpected great tit nestling ;)
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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
Tree pipit nest found in one of our northern plots :)
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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
(Good for flycatchers, over 300 breeding attempts and little failures; bad for tits - we’ve lost close to 30% of broods due to early food shortages). Also, a somewhat wetter and colder season, with night frost in the first weeks of May… Recruitment also seems to be record high!
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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
It takes some getting used to moving from Twitter do Bsky ;) we will provide more updates next year, promise ;) in the meantime - I well overdue update from the 46th Gotland field season :) a very early season (a record-early flycatcher first egg from the 4th of May), and a very mixed one
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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
#gotland #fieldwork Day 32: it seems our blue tits finally saw the feathers we left for them to choose from. This one used a lovely set of white (not ours) feathers with an eclectic set of blue peacock feathers :)
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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 20/04/2025
Stay away from the vortex ;) #fieldwork day 19th during the 2025 season of the #gotland bird project :)
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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
Chukar partridges. We’ll trace the feathers as they are used by blue tits in their nests. Will they use them, and will they locally specialize or roam the forest looking for particular styles? We’ll see;)
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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
We’re piloting a new study - looking at aesthetic tastes of blue tits, and possibly visual style copying behaviour. Today we distributed artificial bird bodies (mimicking the usual source of feathers for BTs - dead birds and leftover feathers). We used feathers of peacocks, Japanese quails and
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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
Tomorrow we start conquering Öja and adjacent areas, with occasional trips to FP - where änge is being cared for by eerie ghosts barely visible through clouds of smoke… Another good spring starting on #gotland, and another year of spying our cheeky tits and phlegmatic flycatchers. 💜💜
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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
flocks of hundreds of redwings and fieldfares, happily grazing a freshly ploughed field. Gotland greeted us with fog and damp air, but there’s no other place that can be so magical and captivating even in the least favourite weather;)
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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
We are starting our new season #gotland2025 - with warm weather, birds already starting first nests, and a visit to a changed Fide Odvalds plot (see photo: they cut down some of the densest parts, in efforts (as I was told) to eradicate invasive Rubus species…). The highlight of today:
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10th Hole-nesting Birds Conference @hnbirds2025.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
Registration is now open for the Hole-nesting Birds Conference 2025! Researchers of all career stages are warmly invited to join us in the historic city of Olomouc, Czechia. #ornithology [Link to register: registrace.rapl.upol.cz/Form/HoleNes...
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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
Our lab on @nature.com cover :)
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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 05/03/2025
Not quite as burst as we usually do it, but this massive comparative analysis of amphibians, with some of us among its authors, was just published by @nature.com !:)
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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
chatting about ecology, evolution, climate change and birds. Reach out to the PIs (Szymek Drobniak @szymekdr.bsky.social and Aneta Arct) if you prefer to PM us. Older entries and content can still be found through our old account here: x.com/gotland_blames
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Hej Blåmes! Gotland's long-term bird monitoring @hejblames.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
We're moving out of Twitter (tbh honest tits and collards never did much of any "tweet-tweet" chirping ;)) Follow us for news from the field, Gotland trivia and kuriåsa, recent papers and events - and more. Reach out if you're interested in collaborating, visiting Gotland and ouir birds or just
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