The #Arctic might be a cold place, but microclimates can get HOT! The cliffs where murres nest can get to a whopping 46.5°C in the full sun.

New work by MSc student Frederique Tremblay, @emilyschoy.bsky.social, @tattersallg.bsky.social & many others available free:

doi.org/10.1016/j.cb...

Eulachon time! All GPS-tracked Middleton kittiwakes are off to the Copper River Delta for eulachon oil, the same stuff that made the Chugach some of the healthiest First Nations on the coast (& which they called "saak").

Thanks to Alexia Nezondet for the updates!

Talk about entitled. This showed up at #MiddletonIsland.

99.3% of Instagram seabird pics, Best flight performance of any bird* & Starred alongside Robin Williams. Still unwilling to share the limelight with a few ol' cormorants.

*Highest wing-loading

#PuffinPrivilege #PuffinPeopleAreTheWorst

Arrival at #MiddletonIsland in the rain. Every year the undergrads seem to get younger.

C21 laid the first egg again & on the same day (May 7th), at least two weeks before the rest of the colony. Hopefully the egg does better than last year's! #MiddletonIsland #EarlyBirdIsntAlwaysBetter

Data from 600+ tracked individual birds show that each summer, seabirds bring Hg across the Arctic from hotspots off the Canadian coast.

Shows the power of international collaboration & the vision of Celine Albert, Jerome Fort & SEATRACK.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

GPS tracking reveals that kittiwakes ingest indigo-dyed plastic fibers in the Gulf of Alaska & feed them to their young. Our most recent paper out #OpenAccess below, led by Paolo Tremolada & Univ Milan.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

First field work of 2024, helping Christina Petalas & crew attach GPS to herring gulls to study origin of plastics-related contaminants.

Great to be out & do field work close to home!

Undergrads made an app to track bird window collisions around campus to find (& remedy) hotspots. (Exhibit A: photos around the CC building). Like the FLAP app, but at a local scale. Have others tried anything similar?

Do songbirds adjust their diet for moult (protein) or migration (energy)? Our #OpenAccess paper using fecal eDNA at a stopover suggests yes!

Undergrad-led paper by Ana Blanc-Benigeri w/ fantastic supporting cast of Vanessa Poirier, Barbara Frei & Desiree Narango

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Brainstorming ideas for improving biodiversity monitoring via undergrad courses. Anyone out there have good ideas?

Always rewarding to pull garlic mustard, but does seem like we're just holding back the tide. Every year, it just comes up worse than before.

Impressive bee guide for campus created by undergrad Amicie Lavault. I might even be able to identify insects correctly for once!

High res version:
shorturl.at/jlEIL

All-auk-ation of foraging space by time & depth [not foraging range] in three auks in #Quebec.

Exciting new paper led by Masters student Christina Petalas in collaboration with Raphael Lavoie.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Loving Kadogawa, Japan: a city obsessed with alcids (or at least one alcid, Japanese Murrelet, with the world's largest colony just offshore).

Definitely worthy of my first Bluesky post!