A great 2nd week working for @n-t-s.bsky.social, helping to count #seabirds around Iona! 🐣 Getting accurate counts is an important first step in measuring and understanding long-term trends in seabird populations 📉

#NTSseabirds @smp-seabirds.bsky.social

My favourite passerine, the whitethroat (controversial, I know!) 💚

It's been great observing their numbers build in our local park over the last week & excellent to catch one in our first ringing session there this morning.

📷 @joewynnbirds.bsky.social
#ornithology #ukbirding

Very very happy to have passed my PhD earlier this week!

Thank you to my examiners @sheldonbirds.bsky.social & Richard Phillips, my supervisors Tom Hart, @gannetguy.bsky.social, @ellingbry.bsky.social, @woodmj.bsky.social, & Katrina Davis, and everyone else who helped me along the way! 📷 🐣

PhD submitted ✅ Now to enjoy fieldwork in Antarctica!! 🐧 ❄

#seabirds #penguins

🪶 Citizen Science Special Issue 🪶

Really pleased to see our #seabirds paper now included in @ibisjournal.bsky.social Citizen Science Special Issue!

Lots of other exciting #ornithology research in there too 🔽

Paper: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Issue: tinyurl.com/ymapsuda

6/9 Most volunteers (81%) classified images for only a single day & each volunteer classified a median of 5 images.

This suggests that high volunteer recruitment rates are important for the project's continued success. Citizen science annotations could also be used to train AI.

5/9 We developed a standardised method to measure colony arrival & departure which was:
1) comparable to manual image analysis
2) gave results consistent with previous studies

Kittiwake colony arrival was 2.6 days later & departure was 1.2 days later per 1° increase in latitude.

4/9 To do this, we collected time-lapse images of breeding kittiwakes across their latitudinal range (51.7°N–78.9°N). Citizen scientists then marked birds in these images on the Zooniverse project, Seabird Watch.

You too can have a go at seabirdwatch.org!

3/9 We tested whether an integrated time-lapse camera & #CitizenScience system could offer a cost-effective means of measuring the migratory timing of a cliff-nesting #seabird: the Black-legged Kittiwake.

Sometimes they like to photobomb our images!!

2/9 Developing standardised methods for efficient & cost-effective data collection at large scale is important for understanding species' decline.

Remote camera networks might offer a solution, but manually analysing images & extracting biologically meaningful data takes time. 📸

The second chapter of my PhD is now published #OpenAccess in @ibisjournal.bsky.social!

‘Using citizen science image analysis to measure #seabird phenology’ ➡️ doi.org/10.1111/ibi....

#seabirds #ornithology #CitizenScience #CitSci @theseabirdgroup.bsky.social
1/9 A short thread below...