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Devi Satarkar @devisatarkar.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Heavier great tit nestlings 🐥 usually end up as heavier adults 🐦. Is this always a strong correlation? Our new preprint shows that the strength of this 'silver-spoon' association shifts continuously with environmental context, and is stronger in harsh conditions! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

14-day old great tit (Parus major) nestling in hand. Bird handled under appropriate BTO licence.

Adult great tit (Parus major) in hand. Bird handled under appropriate BTO licence.

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

New paper in @animalecology.bsky.social led by @davididiaquez.bsky.social published today. We document a reduction of ~5% in body mass of adult great tits at Wytham (>1 sd!) over ~45 years and show best explained by natal environment carry-over besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Jørgen Søraker @jorgensoraker.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Yes, in the south, 3400-4400 pairs estimated in 2015, although that sounds high to me. Looking forward to hear what Stavanger Museum has to say

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Jørgen Søraker @jorgensoraker.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Given the position of the digits I think you have the first four digits, leaving three missing. It would not surprise if we can identify the ringer or the ringing station by this. I’ve contacted some of the ringing contact to see if they can help. Not that many RBS ringed in Norway a year!

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Jørgen Søraker @jorgensoraker.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Super cool! Red-backed Shrikes in Norway should get 8- rings. Rings of 8- come it two main forms as far as I know. One form has seven digits, and always starts with 8. The other one also starts with 8, but is then followed by a letter (most commonly L, M, N or P) and then five digits.

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Rona Learmonth @rona-learmonth.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Excited to share this joint first-author paper with @andreaestandia.bsky.social, now out in @royalsocietypublishing.org! We combined translocations, common garden experiments and genomic analyses to test for local adaptation to individual tree phenology in winter moths 🌳🐛 doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

royalsocietypublishing.org

No evidence of fine-scale local adaptation of winter moths to variable tree phenology | Proceedings B | The Royal Society

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Jørgen Søraker @jorgensoraker.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

I stepped out during the Japan-Sweden match last night. Resulted in a spotted crake. Ran inside to get it on the kitchen-list, the most important list that is!

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Scarcely into June, and already more or less completed this year's tit field season in Wytham, marked with the now traditional group photo. Great teamwork once again led by @mcmahok.bsky.social with excellent support from @ellafcole.bsky.social & Sam Croft. Will update with some data summaries soon!

The 2026 Wytham Tit project field team posing in a Sweet Chestnut Tree. Picture shows 12 fieldworkers sititng in various places on branches and one standing on the ground, surrounded by lush summer vegetation

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Jørgen Søraker @jorgensoraker.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Glad you liked the idea! Chris’ story is definitely worth recording!

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Jørgen Søraker @jorgensoraker.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

🎦 I’ve had the pleasure of working with Chris Perrins lately. He has been a monumental figure within avian ecology for nearly 70 years. He is also a very nice and pleasant person. So, I sat down and chatted to him about his life in science. Here is the result. ⬇️ m.youtube.com/watch?v=W-7F...

m.youtube.com

A life in science- Chris Perrins

YouTube video by Naturalist Pod

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Jørgen Søraker @jorgensoraker.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

We conclude that considering the costs of extra-pair behaviour can improve our understanding of the drivers of (variation in) this behavior.

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Jørgen Søraker @jorgensoraker.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

Females can experience loss of parental care (although this is still poorly understood!), STDs, harassment, divorce etc. However, there are also costs for males, including reduced paternity, search costs, STDs and mate guarding.

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Jørgen Søraker @jorgensoraker.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

… When I took my masters on EPP in house sparrows, I wondered a lot about this. So did @j-dunning.net, who took his PhD on EPP at that time, also on house sparrows! So, together we reviewed what is already known about the costs of EPP.

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Jørgen Søraker @jorgensoraker.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

New paper out in Biological Reviews📝🚨 When trying to explain why female birds engage in extra-pair copulations/paternity, we mostly focus on the benefits. But what about the costs? Should we not consider the downsides of the behavior we try to understand? 🧵 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

The costs of extra‐pair behaviours in birds

Extra-pair behaviours – reproductive behaviours, including those related to copulation and paternity of offspring, amongst animals outside of a social pair bond – have long intrigued behavioural ecol...

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David López-Idiáquez @davididiaquez.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

In our new paper, published yesterday, we use the long-term data set of Wytham Woods to show that great tits have maintained stable temperature at breeding despite the almost 2ºC increase in Spring temperature. w. E. Cole, C. Regan & @sheldonbirds.bsky.social Link -> www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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Devi Satarkar @devisatarkar.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Planning a nestbox temperature manipulation experiment in birds? We’ve just published a preprint that may be useful! 🪺🪶 We review 46 studies and also share our own blue tit pilot experiment from Wytham Woods, highlighting some very real practical challenges doi.org/10.32942/X25387

a blue tit peeking into a wooden nestbox

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

Very pleased to welcome Dr Alexandra Cones (LMU Munich) for an EGI seminar in @biology.ox.ac.uk at 4pm this Friday 17 April. Alexandra will speak on "Embracing Complexity: Untangling sources of phenotypic variation across scales using birds" - also live-streamed: joining details below: ⬇️

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Jørgen Søraker @jorgensoraker.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

🎥🎞️The last EGI seminar of the term (but don’t worry, we will have one extra seminar in April), given by Jennifer Morinay on what determines helping behavior in long-tailed tits is now uploaded to our YouTube-page! m.youtube.com/watch?v=7wb2...

m.youtube.com

Jennifer Morinay- Ecological, demographic and social factors of helping decisions

YouTube video by EGI Oxford

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Jørgen Søraker @jorgensoraker.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

Remember the EGI seminar later today! Last one of this term!

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

🚨🚨 Breaking news from Wytham Woods: The 80th year of data collection of the long-term tit study officially started today with this nest with 3 Blue Tit eggs (pic: @mcmahok.bsky.social). First egg inferred 23 March which is our earliest EVER nest - beating the previous record of 26 March by 3 days!🚨🚨

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Ben Sheldon @sheldonbirds.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

The last of what’s been an outstanding term’s @egioxford.bsky.social seminars this Friday. All planned and organised by DPhil students & postdocs. Many available on our YouTube channel www.youtube.com/@EGIOxford

youtube.com

EGI Oxford

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Such a good EGI seminar from Innes Cuthill today on the ‘survivability onion’ - wide-ranging talk on defensive camouflage in birds, insects and more. One of those seminars that appeals across the department

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Jørgen Søraker @jorgensoraker.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Can you spot the bird in the picture? Really looking forward to the EGI seminar tomorrow that will be given by Prof Innes Cuthill on defensive coloration! Also streamed, so contact us if you want to tune in! Details below⬇️

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

In a return to his former stamping ground, this week's EGI seminar will be given by Prof Innes Cuthill from @bristolbiosci.bsky.social on how to understand defensive coloration - see if you can spot him in this old photo! Seminar in @biology.ox.ac.uk at 3.30 on Friday - joining instructions below ⬇️

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Jørgen Søraker @jorgensoraker.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

Wonderful seminar today by @pauldufour80.bsky.social on how vagrancy in birds can help us understand aspects of bird migration! Particularly interesting to see the altitude Richard’s Pipits reach each night during migration (27:50) Now also on YouTube! m.youtube.com/watch?v=UD1h...

m.youtube.com

Paul Dufour- Understanding bird migration through abnormal movements

YouTube video by EGI Oxford

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Devi Satarkar @devisatarkar.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

My second DPhil paper is out! A nice example of how continuous long-term monitoring of natural populations can be so valuable for understanding impacts of climate change on wild animals 🪶 📍Wytham Woods, Oxfordshire 🌳🪺

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

This week's seminar will be given by @pauldufour80.bsky.social of @vogelwarte.bsky.social on how we can understand bird migration through the study of abnormal movements such as vagrancy. Lecture held in @biology.ox.ac.uk at 3.30 on Fri 13 March - all welcome; online joining instructions ⬇️

Poster for a seminar - Talk abstract:
Vagrant birds were historically neglected in migration research due to their rarity and the limitations of early tracking methods. Yet, growing research shows that vagrancy can help us better understand several aspects of bird migration and its consequences. In this talk, I will show how abnormal migratory movements can inform key processes in bird migration, including the colonization of new territories, the emergence of novel migration routes, and the navigation systems of migratory birds.

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Jørgen Søraker @jorgensoraker.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

🎥📽️🎞️ The two recent EGI-seminars by Alex Bond and Hanna Kokko are both uploaded to the EGI YouTube-channel (@EGI Oxford)! We have quite a few excellent seminars on the channel now, so give it a go! m.youtube.com/watch?v=QMQ7... m.youtube.com/watch?v=C15E...

m.youtube.com

Hanna Kokko- Life takes place on a time axis: tradeoffs in coucals and terns

YouTube video by EGI Oxford

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Jørgen Søraker @jorgensoraker.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

I have really enjoyed working on this project, which hugely benefits from the amazing efforts of so many field-workers and funders over so many years! @egioxford.bsky.social

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Jørgen Søraker @jorgensoraker.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

Also, we found that the correlation in selection for laying date and clutch size for great tits and blue tits were highly correlated, both when using number of fledglings and number of recruits as fitness components. This suggests that they share (at least correlated) drivers of selection!

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Jørgen Søraker @jorgensoraker.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

We found that selection varies mostly temporally and in a spatio-temporal interaction. Only a small proportion of the variation in selection was due to consistent differences among the subpopulations, suggesting that these subpopulations experience mostly similar selection regimes.

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Jørgen Søraker @jorgensoraker.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

In general, we detected non-linear selection for earlier laying date and larger clutch size for both great tits and blue tits.

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Jørgen Søraker @jorgensoraker.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

Selection can vary spatially, temporally or in a combination of those two. Using mixed-effect modelling we decomposed the variation in selection into these three components.

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Jørgen Søraker @jorgensoraker.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

📑📊We have just uploaded a new pre-print where we decompose spatial, temporal and spatial-temporal variation in natural selection on reproductive traits for great tits and blue tits. With Yimen Araya-Ajoy, @ellafcole.bsky.social and @sheldonbirds.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.org

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

This week's EGI seminar will be given by Prof Hanna Kokko @kokkonut.bsky.social from Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz @unimainz.bsky.social on the role of time in avian trade-offs. All welcome in person in LT1 in LaMB @biology.ox.ac.uk 3.30pm on 6 March. Also live-streamed: details available ⬇️

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

This week's EGI seminar will be give by @ruthedunn.bsky.social from @lancasteruni.bsky.social on Seabird-driven energy and nutrient flows, in person in @biology.ox.ac.uk on Friday 27 Feb at 3.30. All welcome! The seminar will also be live-streamed - joining details available below ⬇️

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

This week's EGI seminar will be given by Dr Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social of @nhm-london.bsky.social on his long-term work quantifying effects of plastic pollution on seabirds. Seminar in @biology.ox.ac.uk at 3.30 on Friday - all welcome & streamed live: details below ⬇️

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

This week's seminar will be given by Dr Paul Acker from NTNU, Norway on "Processes of life-history adaptation to spatio-seasonal environmental changes" - seminar at 3.30 on Friday in Life & Mind Building @biology.ox.ac.uk All welcome & will also be streamed - see details below

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

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 ⬇️

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

This week's EGI seminar will be given by Prof Jon Slate @jon-slate.bsky.social of @sheffielduni.bsky.social at 3.30 on Fri 30 Jan in LT1 in LaMB @biology.ox.ac.uk. OK, it's not quite birds, but our colleagues' work on @soaysheep.bsky.social has much in common with what we do. All welcome: details ⬇️

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Keith McMahon @mcmahok.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

We are hiring at the Wytham Woods for the upcoming field season. 4 roles available. Please share with anyone who might be interested. #UKbirds #birdringing

We are seeking to appoint four full-time field assistants to work on the Wytham Tit Project for 4-8 weeks in spring 2026.
Two 8-week field assistants will join the nest monitoring team; duties for these posts will include (i) collecting standardised data from nest-box breeding populations of blue and great tits, (ii) catching and ringing parent birds, (iii) ringing nestlings, and (iv) inputting data collected in the field. These positions with run from approximately Tuesday 7th April to Monday 1st June. Successful candidates for these positions must have (or be qualified to obtain) a BTO permit to ring adult great tits and blue tits.
A further two field assistants will be hired to support a project collecting behavioural (foraging) data for great tits breeding in the Wytham population. These roles will involve a significant amount of nightwork. Duties will include (i) setting up and calibrating electronic tracking equipment and nest box cameras in the field, (ii) mapping tracking equipment locations using GPS, (iii) helping with catching and ringing parent birds and fitting tracking devices, (iv) assisting with mistnetting to re-trap tagged parents, and (v) inputting data collected in the field. These positions with be approximately 7 and 4 weeks in duration, starting from 13th April and 4th May, respectively. Possession of a BTO ringing permit with misnet endorsement and driving license are highly desirable for these roles.
All fieldwork will take place in Wytham Woods, near Oxford. All Successful candidates must be able to demonstrate skill and enthusiasm for biological research as well as experience of fieldwork under arduous conditions, and both lone work and working as part of a team. Due to the short-term nature of these posts, successsful applicants must already have the right to work in the UK. Salary & Accommodation: Field assistants will be paid at grade 5.2 (£17.37/hour). Contact eleanor.cole@Biology.ox.ac.uk

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

Delighted to begin this term's seminars with Malcolm Burgess @piedflynet.bsky.social from @rspb.bsky.social @uniexecec.bsky.social on Migration behaviour, demography & phenology of declining migratory birds. Seminar at 3.30 on 16 Jan in LT1 in the LaMB @biology.ox.ac.uk: all welcome - see details ⬇️

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 11/01/2026

Looking forward to an excellent series of seminars for the forthcoming term - programme now full till late March & will share programme very soon when we have a few last details. All seminars will be at 3.30 on Fridays in the Life & Mind Building (and usually streamed live)

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Jørgen Søraker @jorgensoraker.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

Still present! Incredibly cooperative bird showing excellent for about 100 birders today.

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

This week's seminar - last of this term - is our annual Christmas Seminar. We're welcoming Prof Tim Birkhead back to where he studied as a DPhil student ~50 years ago (can you can spot him in this 1978 photo?) Tim will be talking about "Sperm to Egg: Making a Biologist" - 3pm LT1 in the LaMB

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

This week’s EGI seminar will be given by @peterkorsten.bsky.social from Aberystwyth on the ecology of behavioural variation in the wild at 3.30pm Friday 5 Dec - LT1 in @biology.ox.ac.uk. All welcome & live-streamed: see joining details below.

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Journal of Avian Biology @avianbiology.bsky.social · 16/11/2025

NEW PAPER: Introduced house sparrows showed more numerous, larger, and more variable DNA-methylation changes after simulated infection than native birds, suggesting distinct epigenetic responses that may aid introduction success. ➡️ vist.ly/4eq4a #ornithology #birds #plasticity #stress 🪶

Fig. 1 from the article: introduced house sparrows had more sites with significant change in DNA methylation and a larger magnitude of change in DNA methylation between 0- and 8-h after lipopolysaccharide injection.

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Ben Sheldon @sheldonbirds.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

Just a reminder of today’s @egioxford.bsky.social seminar - all welcome

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

This week’s seminar will be given by Prof Daniel Field of @zoologymuseum.bsky.social & @cambridge-earthsci.bsky.social on the origins of modern birds. 3.30pm Friday 28 Nov in LT1 in the Life & Mind Building @biology.ox.ac.uk - all welcome & see below for live streaming joining information

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