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Becca Ralston

@rebeccaralston.bsky.social
118 followers 170 following 10 posts

PhD student studying avian responses to climate change @nathist.bsky.social and @helsinki.fi 🐦

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Reposted by Becca Ralston
Aleksi Lehikoinen @aksulehikoinen.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
Happy International Day of #WomeninScience! Fantastic women scientist are working in the my research group @hkilabornithology.bsky.social @nathist.bsky.social @helsinki.fi! Please have a look at what kind of research topics they have: youtu.be/-J4sjwulT04 1/2
youtu.be
The Helsinki Lab of Ornithology
YouTube video by Aleksi Lehikoinen
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Becca Ralston @rebeccaralston.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
Happy #womenInscience day! I study how birds use multiple strategies to respond to climate change @helsinki.fi @nathist.bsky.social I'm grateful to have a ton of great women scientists around for me to learn from and look up to as I do my PhD! #minätutkin
A person holding a bohemian waxwing
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Becca Ralston @rebeccaralston.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
New paper out now at @consbiog.bsky.social ! eBird data reveals that nonbreeding conditions can affect prothonotary warbler spring arrival timing at broad scales, and spatial patterns suggest that eastern populations are more vulnerable to climate change doi.org/10.1111/ddi....
A bright yellow bird with steel blue wings in a person's hand
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 16/10/2025
Bird migration is changing. What does this reveal about our planet? – visualised
theguardian.com
Bird migration is changing. What does this reveal about our planet? – visualised
Bird migrations rank as one of nature’s greatest spectacles. Thanks to GPS tracking, scientists are uncovering extraordinary insights into ancient and mysterious journeys – and new threats that are reshaping them.
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Rebecca Heisman @rheisman.bsky.social · 07/07/2025
A thing I've been working on is out now: I wrote the cover story for the summer issue of Living Bird! Scientists have sequenced the genomes of almost all 25 (!) song sparrow subspecies AND connected their genes to how they're each likely to fare under climate change.
allaboutbirds.org
The Secret to Song Sparrows' Extraordinary Success Lies in Their Genome
This ordinary-seeming songbird species is teeming with subtle genetic diversity, which allows local populations to respond in various ways to a changing world.
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Mindy Weisberger @laminda.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
An absolute stunner of an Archaeopteryx fossil preserves SO MUCH soft tissue, including scales on its toe pads and a group of flight feathers never seen before in Archaeopteryx. Known as tertials, they lie between the elbow and the body, and play a key role in powered flight for modern birds 🧪
cnn.com
A rare Archaeopteryx fossil was kept from scientists for decades. Its first-ever analysis reveals how the ‘first bird’ took flight | CNN
Scientists were finally given access to a remarkable Archaeopteryx fossil that’s allowed them to better understand exactly how the earliest known bird could fly.
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Jim Musil Painter @jimmusilpainter.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
My painting TIDAL WETLANDS
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Becca Ralston @rebeccaralston.bsky.social · 20/04/2025
It's so exciting to see the places I've been visiting since January fill with birdsong
A view from a forested hilltop with several prominent dead trees and smaller living conifers under a mostly blue sky. Buildings along the horizon peek through the trees. A forest of conifers growing amid large rocks covered with a thin yellow-green moss
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Lauren @tinylongwing.bsky.social · 19/04/2025
I'm delighted to be able to share my latest artwork for the @songbirding.com podcast and audiobook series! Singing female American Redstart, because female birds definitely do sing and we're finally starting to pay attention. 🎨🪶 #SciArt #BirdArt 🧪
Illustration of a singing female American Redstart on a bright sunny spring day. Her head is tipped back, beak open, while she is perched on a mottled brown branch. She is overall grayish on the body but has a patch of bright yellow at the side of the breast, and a black and yellow tail. Behind her are pale pastel well-lit dogwood flowers and soft green leaves.
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Scientists on Survival @scientistsonsurviv.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
“A new review of 50 recent studies finds that protests tend to sway media coverage and public opinion toward the climate cause, without appearing to backfire, even when disruptive tactics are used”. climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications...
climatecommunication.yale.edu
The impacts of climate activism - Yale Program on Climate Change Communication
We are pleased to announce the publication of a new article, “The impacts of climate activism” in the journal Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. In this article, the research team reviews and syn...
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Becca Ralston @rebeccaralston.bsky.social · 05/04/2025
only a few geese in Pärnu today
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British Ornithologists’ Union (BOU) @bou.org.uk · 18/03/2025
Factors underlying migratory timing of a seasonally migrating bird | www.nature.com/artic... | Scientific Reports | #ornithology 🪶
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Becca Ralston @rebeccaralston.bsky.social · 29/03/2025
I had a really great birding trip today, where I got my FOY eiders and oystercatchers, as well as one of the coolest new birds I've seen here so far: a eurasian eagle owl!
A picture taken at the edge of a rocky coastline before a glassy calm sea. The setting sun reflects yellow in the water and turns the haze on the horizon a deep blue
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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
This dataviz is absolutely amazing 😍 Global bird species' conservation status displayed as a massive flock! By Andrea Garrec, longlisted for the 2024 Information Is Beautiful Awards www.informationisbeautifulawards.com/showcase/731... #dataviz 📊🌏🧪🐦🦉🦆🦅
What appears to be a massive flock of birds in red, purple and blue colours in a pale blue sky. Each "bird" represents a bird species, and their colour represents their conservation status from the IUCN Red List. Around one third of species appear to be near threatened, endangered or extinct
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Max Kozlov @maxkozlov.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
“It’s extremely alarming that grants that have been vetted by the scientific community and deemed important and impactful to understand the world are now being cancelled because of political ideology,” says @lkfazio.bsky.social. “This is direct censorship of scientific research.”
nature.com
Exclusive: NIH to terminate hundreds of active research grants
Studies that touch on LGBT+ health, gender identity and DEI in the biomedical workforce could be terminated, according to documents obtained by Nature.
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British Ornithologists’ Union (BOU) @bou.org.uk · 03/03/2025
Potential for bird–insect phenological mismatch in a tri‐trophic system | doi.org/10.1111/1365... | @animalecology.bsky.social | #ornithology 🪶
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Laura Helmuth @laurahelmuth.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
"The diversity of sexual phenotypes across species is vast and spectacular" & so is this delightful story. Thanks to @professormaney.bsky.social for showing how white-throated sparrows are more proof that we shouldn't "flatten nature’s wondrous diversity into two categories, male and female." 🧪
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Dr Zoë Ayres @zjayres.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
On International Day of Women and Girls in Science, a reminder to not close your eyes and turn away from what is happening in the US right now. Fascism is an assault on scientific integrity, knowledge, and innovation. www.chron.com/news/space/a...
chron.com
NASA to wipe mentions of women, Indigenous people from websites
NASA employees told to remove mentions of women, indigenous people, and environmental justice from websites.
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Aleksi Lehikoinen @aksulehikoinen.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
Happy International Day for Women and Girls in Science! Fantastic women scientist are working in the my research group @nathist.bsky.social @helsinki.fi! Please have a look at what kind of research topics they have: youtu.be/ugiyHy86taw It is a privilege to work with you! #womeninscience #minätutkin
youtu.be
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Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 30/01/2025
"In every living thing there ticks a clock...": @david-farrier.bsky.social superb & unsettling on how "wild clocks"––spruce saplings, oyster colonies, reindeer herds––are falling out of synchronization as the Earth transforms. It’s becoming harder to keep time. emergencemagazine.org/essay/wild-c...
emergencemagazine.org
Wild Clocks – David Farrier
Attentive to the loss of age-old ecological relationships as “wild clocks” fall out of synchronization with each other, David Farrier imagines an opportunity to renew the rhythms by which we live and ...
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Kevin Bird @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
The dismantling of American Science continues. The Organismal Response to Climate Change grant call has been cancelled. The NSF Director is a disgrace
Email text:
[EXT] Grants.gov
Opportunities Update
External Email
The following grant opportunities were created, updated, or deleted on Grants.gov:
NSF
National Science Foundation
25-504 - Organismal Response to
Climate Change
Deletion Comments: Opportunity deleted
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Becca Ralston @rebeccaralston.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
two goldcrest putting on a show
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Becca Ralston @rebeccaralston.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
I've had less opportunity to watch birds in the snow since coming to Finland than I expected but I did manage to see this very round bullfinch the other day
A very round Eurasian Bullfinch in the snow
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Rebecca Heisman @rheisman.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
This is incredibly cool research, even more so because it was done using nocturnal flight call recordings! 🪶 www.scientificamerican.com/article/migr...
scientificamerican.com
Migrating Birds Sing to Team Up with Other Species
Songbirds may socialize across species during nighttime migrations
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Stephen Vickers @stephen8vickers.bsky.social · 14/01/2025
New paper published today in Movement Ecology! We show North American birds that migrate in flocks have greater long-term non-breeding range shifts, particularly if flocks are mixed-age. We link this to social learning in novel migration route development. rdcu.be/d57Mw 1/10 #ornithology
rdcu.be
North American avian species that migrate in flocks show greater long-term non-breeding range shift rates
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Aleksi Lehikoinen @aksulehikoinen.bsky.social · 14/01/2025
The web-pages of our research group @hkilabornithology.bsky.social @nathist.bsky.social @helsinkiuni.bsky.social have been updated, incl. a video about our work. Please have a look! www.helsinki.fi/en/researchg... youtu.be/ugiyHy86taw
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Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
2024 daily temperatures compared to past years. A frightening graphic from the BBC. #ClimateEmergency
Chart showing rapidly rising temperatures with 2024 the worst
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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
✅ Do you use R or Python? ✅ Are you an ecologist/biologist? Then you might find our website ALA Labs useful! ALA Labs is full of how-to articles to visualise or analyse biodiversity data. Some are for beginners, others are advanced/experimental 😀 labs.ala.org.au 🧪🌏 #rstats #python #quartopub
ALA Labs frontpage & text logo. ALA LABS text is in white, formatted as off-centre stacked text. Underneath is smaller text, "Experiments in code, data analysis & visualisation from the Atlas of Living Australia." The background is green grass with a Southern Brown Tree Frog in the middle, hanging onto the grass. It has a darker brown top and lighter brown underside. The frog's eye is a rich dark yellow, with a black pupil in the shape of an oval, stretching from the left to right side of the eyeAn animated scroll through an ALA Labs post, showing code, text and visuals to make a data visualisation in R. The article is on how to make a hexagon map of Australia, where each hexagon is an area of Australia, and each point in the hexagon is positioned and coloured to represent a species.Examples of dataviz that ALA Labs posts show how to make in R. They are colourful and fun. One of them is even 3D!
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Becca Ralston @rebeccaralston.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
A new year & a new start for me as a PhD student studying avian responses to climate change at the University of Helsinki and the Finnish Museum of Natural History!
The front of the Finnish Museum of Natural HistoryA snowy forest with a path leading through it
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