Maxime Dahirel
LightNews LightNews
banner
mdahirel.bsky.social
Maxime Dahirel
@mdahirel.bsky.social
250 followers 71 following 300 posts
they/he | Urban ecologist, Dr of Snails, sometimes Spider Wrangler, these days mostly Computer Swearer-At. May make and give baked goods without warnings. https://mdahirel.github.io/
Posts Replies Media Videos
mdahirel.bsky.social
If you see this, post your bird art
A clean digital doodle of a northern cardinal perched on a fence, with a grey-green square as background A messier digital sketch of a blue tit, interrogative A quick digital sketch of a common kingfisher, on a messy green background meant to evoke leaves
November 10, 2025 at 7:03 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
Apparently there are Birds outside?
A bunch of Northern Lapwings flying towards the left of the frame on a grey sky. These are blue/black and white birds with quite large wings A Goldcrest on a tree branch. It's a small bird with a black spot around its eye making it look bigger, and a big yellow stripe on its forehead. The background behind it is very orange, very fall colours
November 2, 2025 at 2:40 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
The 'direct, specific and distinctive' is specifically why it reminds me of that tumblr post so much I guess
Tumblr post by user spookyoboro: my favorite thing about the title ‘teenage mutant ninja turtles’ is how every word throws you a new curveball Tumblr post by user spookyoboro: like, teenage? Solid starting point. Popular protagonist demographic. I can understand that. Suddenly hard left into ‘mutant’ and oh shit that’s wild are we going into xmen territory here? How are they gonna play this? Let’s wait and s- ninjas? Yo this can’t possibly get cooler ninjas are wild right? And then suddenly they end with ‘turtles’ and your hopes and dreams don’t know what to do anymore and your entire worldview has been shattered. Good title.
October 11, 2025 at 4:20 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
I might! I'm tired so I'm struggling a little to understand *why* it works when (plot1/plot2)|(map1/map2) doesn't, but playing with plot_layout does: (plot1+map1+plot2+map2) + plot_layout(ncol=2,nrow=2) for instance

(unless I'm so tired I didn't get your question right)
A patchwork of 2 random plots and 2 random maps. The limits of the map panels are not aligned with the plot panels. A patchwork of 2 random plots and 2 random maps. The maps and the plots are aligned!
September 17, 2025 at 6:59 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
One of my main snail models and what looks like one of my main spider models? On the same 17th century painting? #InverteFest

(Flowers in a Glass Bottle on a Marble Plinth, Jan Davidsz. de Heem, about 1670, National Gallery, London www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/ja...)
A detail of the bottom part of an old painting. We can see a glass bottle on a plinth, with the stems of flowers visible in the bottle, and some fruits and flowers visible around the bottle. But more importantly, on the plinth, there is also a bumblebee, a grove snail, and what looks like a cross spider (and is at least definitely an Araneus)
August 29, 2025 at 10:31 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
In addition, @youn-henry.drosophila.social.ap.brid.gy also happens to be a very talented illustrator and artist (more, including lots of stuff of interest to the #InverteFest crowd, at jesuisunstegosaure.artstation.com)
A watercolor illustration showing a parasitoid wasp on some bramble, probing cutesy little green aphids passing by to see which ones she's gonna lay eggs in. There's one aphid that looks very brown and dead: it's a "mummy", there's a parasitoid developing in it! The background is full of very detailed greenery; there's a couple bugs hidden in it, including a caterpillar munching on a leaf
August 29, 2025 at 10:00 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
Shy jumping spider for the first day of #InverteFest
A jumping spider on a metallic fence. The spider is overall brownish, which makes the teal color of its eyes pop
August 25, 2025 at 11:14 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
May I offer you a damselfly (not a damselfish!) in these trying times
A Banded Demoiselle perched on a dry grass spike. It's a very metallic blue damselfly, with the entire half of its wing covered by a big dark blue spot
July 14, 2025 at 9:36 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
Very happy with this new lens I got myself a few weeks ago, both it and the local parks keep delivering
A Western Willow Spreadwing hanging under a grass blade, with all the background vegetation completely out of focus. it's a very metallic green damselfly An immature Bush Snail (Fruticicola fruticum) hanging under a nettle leaf. It's a yellow/cream snail with dark brown blotches A painted lady butterfly (Vanessa cardui), on some valerian flowers (I think? I am bad at flowers). Its wings are closed, so we see the underwings, and it looks great: the forewing is red and black with white spots, while the hindwing has a very complex mesh of brown spots, which also eyespots A close-up of a fencepost jumping spider (Marpissa muscosa), you guessed it, on a fencepost. The spider is directly facing the photographer, and it's so close only its head is in focus
July 1, 2025 at 12:07 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
(...)
- birds!
- *marine* snails (these were so tiny!)
- a shy crab
- and (checks notes) a "miniature" Statue of Liberty watching over the dunes, looking towards the ocean??

Now, looking forward to days (weeks?) of finding sand absolutely everywhere in my stuff in increasingly random places
Three Ruddy Turnstones walking on a beach. These are small shorebirds with distinctively colored plumage: their back and wings are light brown speckled with black, their head is black with black stripes and a black breast, their underside is fully white Tiny marine snails on some brown rock uncovered by the tide A crab hiding in a tiny hole on a rock uncovered by low tide (We can only see its left half). The rock around the hole is covered by green algae and barnacles A smaller copy of the Statue of Liberty, seen from below, with blue sky in the background and a French flag floating on the statue's right side
May 23, 2025 at 7:36 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
Back from a week of fieldwork on both Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of the south of France! Highlights included:
- snails!
- LOADS of shiny flower beetles
- using the long train trips across France to finally catch up with @msemilyedwards.bsky.social's Viviana Valentine
(...)
A green shiny beetle walking on the stamens of a flower, with its pink and yellow petals framing the shot in the foreground and background A round-ish snail shell, off-white with brown stripes, on the top of a wooden post. It's the snail Theba pisana, which is quite common in many coastal dunes An off-white land snail shell on black cloth, with a measuring card at the bottom of the shot. The shell looks like a typical conical snail shell except it's neatly cut off so doesn't have a pointy end. This is not the shell breaking after death or something, this species (Rumina decollata) is normally Like That even when living, because individuals break the top of their own shell when becoming adults An e-reader screen, showing the cover of a newly started book (it's "Viviana Valentine goes up the river" by Emily J. Edwards)
May 23, 2025 at 7:36 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
Now that this #InverteFest is done, here's a tree of everyone's observations in the iNaturalist project (and the subset of my own observations). I have a few updates of this code on my to-do list, but didn't find time before this session, maybe next time?
A circular phylogenetic tree titled "#InverteFest! April 2025!!", with the tree base at the centre of the circle and the tree spreading outwards. It is a very dense tree with a bit over 1300 terminal taxa. Parts of the tree representing major taxa are highlighted in various colours; insects make almost three quarters of the tree tips, spiders and molluscs maybe 7-8% each, malacostracans a bit less. Animal silhouettes from Phylopic.org are also placed around relevant parts of the tree: a millipede, a spider, a snail, a sea anemone, a butterfly, a fly, a ground beetle, a wasp, a planthopper, a grasshopper and a dragonfly (clockwise from top). The same tree as in the previous image, but without the title and captions and zoomed in A smaller phylogenetic tree (about 100 tips) that contains only my observations. Parts of the tree are colored the same way as the big one, and the proportions are actually quite similar, except I don't have observations of marine groups and I have a bit more spiders
May 1, 2025 at 2:14 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
(2/2) (with more on the #InverteFest project page on iNaturalist)
A glowworm larva on some dirt. It's a long black beetle larva with white-yellow spot on the back side of each segment An amber snail on a leaf, with its tentacles peeking out of the shell. It a brownish snail with a slightly pointy shell; below the leaf there is a scale card, so you can see it's not even 1 cm long, so smol A white Flower Crab Spider (Misumena vatia) on some green leaf. It's a crab spider so its two first pairs of legs are way longer than the others, and it has them extended in what I can only describe as a "come at me bro" position A Fourteen-spotted Lady Beetle on a leaf (Propylea quatuordecimpunctata). It's a yellow and black lady beetle, with a pattern that looks way more like a checkerboard to me than actual spots
April 26, 2025 at 9:16 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
It's both #InverteFest and the City Nature Challenge right now, so I went outside to see bugs and slugs (1/2)
A long thin millipede on some decaying wood. It's white-yellowish with club-like antennae and red dots near the legs on every segment. I think it's Blaniulus guttulatus A leopard slug (Limax maximus) on the ground, partly hidden by a dead leaf. It's a large grey-brown slug with dark spots and blotches not unlike, you guessed it, a leopard A very red beetle (with black legs and antennae), contrasting with the green of the leaf it's on and the background. It's a common cardinal beetle Pyrochroa serraticornis A winged aphid that found itself on my sleeve. This one I have no clue what it is, aphids are hard
April 26, 2025 at 8:59 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
Since I've just reached that population in my pictures:
A cropped photograph of a typical Cepaea nemoralis snail shell on a black background, in apertural view (apex of the shell pointing to the top of the picture, opening of the shell towards the camera). It's a typically globose shell, yellow-ish in colour with brown bands. As is usual in that species the opening of the shell is on the right side of the picture when viewed this way (which also means the apex of the shell would point to the right side of a living snail). On the side of the image we see a bit of a colorchecker target, with colour patches used to ensure colours can be standardised between images A Cepaea nemoralis shell that's very much like the previous one, except! the shell opening is on the left side of the shell! Unusual
January 30, 2025 at 4:55 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
Was hoping there was still some snow remaining in the forest from this week's snowfall, was not disappointed
Two very green Rose-ringed parakeets on a snow-covered dead tree. One of the parakeet is hidden in a tree hole, with just its head showing, the other is on a branch looking below A Nuthatch looking from a moss-covered tree, with the background covered in snow. It's a bird that's orange on the belly, blue on top and with a large black eye stripe A Brambling on a ring of dead leaves at the bottom of a tree. It's an orange and brown finch with black and orange wings. Around the tree te ground is covered with melting snow A European Robin on a snow-covered log, this is like holiday card picture stuff, but it's too late. It's a round brownish bird with a characteristic red patch on the breast and up to the eyes
January 12, 2025 at 8:44 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
Not my first bird of the year, but one of the best pictures of the first bird walk of the year (also I love goldfinches)
A goldfinch rests on a prickly teasel inflorescence. Its white and red face is very distinctive, it has a yellow bar on the wing, and the rest of its body is black (head and wing), brown and white. In the background, blurry, two more goldfinches are flying away.
January 3, 2025 at 10:38 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
Now that this #InverteFest is done, here's the usual tree of the iNaturalist observations! And also the tree of just my own observations, since I can do that now (you can really see the difference in structure vs the global tree, because it's winter here and my finds were mostly what was under logs)
A circular phylogenetic tree titled "#InverteFest! December 2024!!", with the tree base at the centre of the circle and the tree spreading outwards. It is a very dense tree with a bit over 1000 terminal taxa. Parts of the tree representing major taxa are highlighted in various colours; insects make almost three quarters of the tree tips, spiders and molluscs maybe 7-8% each, malacostracans a bit less. Animal silhouettes from Phylopic.org are also placed around relevant parts of the tree: a millipede, a spider, a snail, a butterfly, a fly, a ground beetle, a wasp, a planthopper, a grasshopper and a dragonfly (clockwise from top). The same tree as in the previous image, but without the title and captions and zoomed in Another circular phylogenetic tree titled this time "My own December 2024 #InverteFest". This one has way fewer branches (a bit over 20 tips). Here insects take about 20% of the tree, snails a bit more, millipedes maybe 15% and spiders and isopods about 10% each. This is pretty much what you'd expect to find under logs in European winter
January 2, 2025 at 11:32 AM
mdahirel.bsky.social
Some of the bugs and slugs seen in my #InverteFest forest walk yesterday, aka about 25% of the tree in the quoted post
A Lemon Slug (Malacolimax tenellus) on some bit of wood left over after a tree was cut. It's a yellow-orange slug with dark blue tentacles A Rounded Snail (Gonyodiscus rotundatus) on a dead brown leaf on the ground. It's a small snail that has a slightly flattened yellow-brown shell with brown-red stripes. The surface of the shell is not smooth and has very clear ribs A Cicurina cicur spider on some bit of decaying wood. It's a fairly non-descript brown spider, its most distinctive trait is that while its abdomen is a bit fuzzy, its cephalothorax is completely smooth, hairless and thus slightly shiny A very blurry picture of a Notiophilus ground beetle running on debris, with some moss and grass here and there. It's so blurry you wonder how someone could identify that even to genus, but even on such a crappy pic one can see its characteristic very, very large eyes and its nice copper colour
December 27, 2024 at 4:03 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
With #InverteFest going on, I'm finally cleaning up the code I use to make phylogenetic trees from iNat each session.

Still WIP, but now I can make trees not just from a project as before, but also from the obs by a specific user, or both at the same time (image: my own obs so far in this session)
A circular phylogenetic tree; black lines branching out from the center in a pairwise fashion until reaching the tips, which correspond the observed 17 taxa so far. Major groups are highlighted in colour: there are 5 molluscs in green/turquoise, 2 spiders in purple, 1 millipede in blue, 3 woodlice in yellow/brown, 5 insects in red and 1 uncoloured taxon (it's a springtail)
December 27, 2024 at 2:38 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
Take an urban ecologist to an ecology conference, and of course they'll use a break to look for a bit of urban biodiversity right outside the venue #BES2024
A white wagtail on a grey concrete bench. It's a small white and grey bird with a long tail, partially cropped out here, and a very white face with a black cap A very cropped and low light picture of a curlew walking on mud. It's a bird with fairly long legs but an even longer, and curved beak. Like the beak is over half the length of the bird's body A turnstone on a concrete bit sticking out of the water. It's a brownish bird with a white and black underside, and it's foraging among mussels A Redshank walking on wet mud. It's a grey-ish bird with a speckled underside, long-ish and reddish legs and a red and black beak
December 11, 2024 at 10:02 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
Starting InverteFest a bit early this year at #BES2024
Jellyfish holiday lights on the street at night
December 10, 2024 at 7:13 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
At #BES2024 this week! If you wanna hear/read about not snails (for once*) but dune plants, coastal protection, urban ecology, and occupancy models applied to iNat data, come by my poster on Thursday

*I might still talk about snails at some point, prompted or not
A conference attendee badge and lanyard with handwritten they/he pronouns, on an insect print tote bag. The insect drawings are colourful and I think taken from old natural history books
December 10, 2024 at 7:10 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
Seeing everyone posting #crustmas pictures so I went through my crustacean photos from this year, and this one I already posted is clearly my favourite, and not just because a mollusc is taking most of the space
A tiny woodlouse (I don't know which species yet) near a leopard slug that seems absolutely gigantic in comparison, you get the feeling the Jurassic Park theme should play. Like the woodlouse would be able to enter the breathing pore of the slug if it wanted. Out of focus and closer to the slug you have a few more of the same woodlice
December 6, 2024 at 10:18 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
I clicked on Add To Cart so fast when this tiny cat dropped in @kness.bsky.social 's shop, and now it's here tysm I love it!!
A tiny handmade ceramic figurine of a black cat, side by side with the box it came in, on which there is a just as cute hand drawing of the same cat The bottom of the figurine showing the paws are drawn in white
September 28, 2024 at 10:12 PM