This year I was really pleased to be shortlisted for the British Ecological Society's Elton Prize, awarded for the best research paper in Journal of Animal Ecology written by an early career researcher. As part of this shortlisting, I wrote a blog post for Animal Ecology in Focus outlining the background to our research on age-assortative mating in bird populations - read it here!

Another wonderful trip down to Portland Bird Observatory brought with it a new species for my bird life list - purple sandpiper! There was a small flock of five individuals at Portland Bill. This is a winter visiting species in the UK, and there is still much we do not understand about their migratory movements, though it is thought that many of our wintering birds come from Arctic Canada. I took some photos myself but my colleague David López Idiáquez took these even more impressive ones below!

A lot of what I post on this blog concerns local wildlife sightings and endeavours, but when I'm not out birdwatching I undertake research on the causes and consequences of variation in age structure in natural populations (for example, if there are many old versus many young individuals in an animal population, how does this affect how the population socialises, performs reproductively, and interacts with its environment?). I recently had the pleasure of presenting some of my findings at a Royal Society scientific meeting themed on Age and Society. This was a great privilege as these meetings have been running since the 17th Century, and have previously held talks from some of the most eminent scientists including Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke and Charles Darwin. I got incredibly useful feedback, and it was very encouraging to see scientists working on the most contemporary challenges in ecology and social evolution. My talk can be found below from 1:48:30.

New OxPods episode is out! Found on our website, Spotify, Google and Apple podcasts.

The trajectory of evolving species is strongly affected by the environment in which they exist, and one particularly interesting example of this is when organisms evolving on islands differ predictably from their continental counterparts through a suite of morphological and behavioural traits, known as ‘The Island Syndrome’. But what is it that’s so special about islands that leads to this process, and what can biologists learn from the species that exhibit the syndrome?
 
In this episode of OxPods, I chat to Prof Sonya Clegg, an associate professor of evolutionary ecology at the University of Oxford who studies the processes that promote species divergence

New OxPods episode is out! Found on our website, Spotify, Google and Apple podcasts.

Sex is so widespread that you could assume it’s essential for life as we know it, playing a central role in the evolution and the development of animal and human societies. However, it’s not the only way of producing offspring, and compared to asexual reproduction, sex actually entails a number of costs. Because of this, ‘Why sex?’ is one of the most fundamental questions in biology that has puzzled scientists for many years.
 
In this episode of OxPods, I chat to Dr Chris Wilson, an evolutionary biologist whose research aims to uncover why sex exists.​

Waxwings are surely one of the most sought after bird sightings for a UK-based birdwatcher in the winter. These birds are winter visitors to our isles, but the numbers that visit fluctuate greatly year-by-year depending on the size of the local population in their Scandinavian breeding grounds. This winter has been a waxwing "irruption" in the UK, and I was waiting for some local visitors until today where there has been a small flock feeding in the housing estate where I live! It was great to see them on my walk into the office. It also made me wonder about the wider patterns of winter visiting birds in the UK. This year I have seen many more redpoll and siskin around Oxford, both of which are winter visitors to the UK (although siskins do have a moderate breeding population restricted outside of central England). I wonder whether waxwing irruptions correlate with winters where we see many more numbers in the other species that come from their Northern breeding grounds?

I had a very grey walk around Farmoor reservoir to catch up with some of the site's classic winter species, as well as a few unusual visitors. The female greater scaup was showing well, a species that has been wintering at this site for a number of years now, but always as a single individual or in very low numbers. Additionally, a lovely pair of red knot were found along the causeway. Large numbers of this species winters in the UK away from their Arctic breeding grounds, but its an unusual species to see in central Oxfordshire seeing as they mostly congregate along our coastlines.

2023 was my best year of birding so far, seeing 197 species in total (21 more than the previous year), including a massive 36 lifers! This is reflective of a few things: more time spent birding local patches; a few trips to new places; and a generally increasing love for knowing what birds are around me wherever I go.

The first of these (birding local patches) was something relatively new to me. I focussed on an area which I've posted about previously - a 2km squared patch in the northeast of the city of Oxford. I visited this site over 100 times during the year, made easy by the fact that I walk through part of it on my way to and from work. Highlights include my daily visits after fieldwork in the spring to a small flood, which luckily didn't dry up until May allowing for a few interesting waders which dropped past on their migrations (including lapwing, green sandpiper and common sandpiper). Also, a few lucky flyovers from species such as yellow wagtail and oystercatcher in the spring, and brambling and merlin in the winter, brought my tally up. Significant flooding in the north along the river Cherwell allowed for a shelduck and great white egret (the last two species seen on the patch before the new year!). However, the main highlight for me was the totally unexpected barn owl which flew off a roosting site in September, I'll be sure to keep my eyes out for it in the future as this is a relatively rare species to see within the city. In total, I saw 97 species on this site - not bad for a non-coastal urban patch!

Visiting new places both within and outside the UK was also a great way to see new species. A trip with the research group to Norfolk in February was made special by seeing tonnes of brent geese, pink-footed geese and whooper swans across a number of sites; shore lark at Holkham bay; and a long-eared owl and snow bunting at Cley. I took an Easter break with my family to the Cairngorms, which featured one of my birding highlights of the year with a pair of golden eagles on my birthday; and a post-field season camping trip to Gloucestershire was a great opportunity to see the returning bluethroat. Visiting my girlfriend's family in Paris meant I was able to see some species rarely seen in the UK, including a black kite along a main road just outside of the city, as well as short-toed treecreeper and middle spotted woodpecker in a large metropolitan park. My annual family trip to Scilly was fantastic this year, with the pelagics sea trip bringing Wilson's storm petrel and three new species of shearwater. Finally, a trip to Copenhagen with my sisters in December included a short walk around Naturecenter Amager, where I saw my first ever rough-legged buzzard.

2024 will be an interesting year. I'll be finishing off my PhD and am unsure of where I'll be going after that - but I'm excited to see what this uncertainty will lead to (both bird-related and bird-unrelated!).

Top 10 2023 bird moments:
1. Pair of golden eagles on 8th April (my birthday!) undergoing pairing behaviour from the summit of Creag Choinnich in the Cairngorms.
2. Small flock of shore lark glistening in winter sunlight after a long walk trying our best to find them on 25th Feb at Holkham Bay.
3. A beautiful bluethroat posing on a post to a small group of birders on 16th June at WWT Slimbridge.
4. The wood warbler with its ridiculously beautiful song trilling and showing well on the 29th April in Wytham Woods after a check of my nest-box round.
5. Finding a common sandpiper on the 23rd May after many daily trips to the local Marston Meadows flood.
6. A pogo-ing Wilson’s storm petrel dashing past the boat on the 24th July on a pelagics seabird trip off Scilly.
7. A couple of beautiful singing woodlark on the 26th February in south-east Oxfordshire.
8. An eery spotted crake singing its unusal drip-drop like calls at dusk on the 29th April at RSPB Otmoor.
9. The sudden appearance of a Goshawk when watching one of the data collection drone flights on 21st March at Wytham Woods.
10. Ringing my first firecrest on 28th September caught at Portland Bird Observatory.

The four classic catches at Wytham Woods: great tit, blue tit, marsh tit and coal tit.

I recently took another trip down to Portland Bird Observatory with the research group I'm part of for a few days of ringing. Portland is an isle in Dorset, tied to the mainland via a very thin barrier beach called Chesil Beach. It's an excellent place to go birding during the autumn migration period as many birds that have spent their summer breeding throughout the UK treat it as their final drop-off point before making the long trek back to their various wintering grounds. As well as birdwatching, it's specifically a great place to go ringing during this time of the year, and, weather-dependent, the days can become very busy going back-and-forth to the nets to ring and collect data on the many pipits, swallows and warblers which pass through. This year, we had a mix of weather, which allowed both for busy days of ringing at the observatory, as well as some local birdwatching at nearby sites. The highlights of the trip were our visit to Abbotsbury swannery (where we got the chance to ring a few swans, as well as getting good views from an unexpected osprey), and having the chance to ring a couple of new species (including rock pipit, grasshopper warbler and a firecrest). The full trip yielded 96 species in just four days, with the entire trip report found here.