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.

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;)

Trevlig midsommar ;)

Nestlings from a blue tit clutch with an unexpected great tit nestling ;)

Tree pipit nest found in one of our northern plots :)

(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!

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

#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 :)

Stay away from the vortex ;) #fieldwork day 19th during the 2025 season of the #gotland bird project :)

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;)

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

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. 💜💜

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;)

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:

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