It’s here! Volume 2 of Flycatchers - Myiarchus and Kingbirds. Arrives on May 7! This volume benefited from your feedback on Vol 1. Over the next few weeks Andy Birch @LALABirding and I will share little snippets of the book. This group of flycatchers may be even harder than empids but we try to make it accessible to all. @PrincetonNature

Writing a paper or a book is like building a house. Got to build the framework and infrastructure first before one starts worrying about the color of each room. The bathroom, for example, shouldn’t be in the kitchen. If the framework is wrong, nothing one does can save the house. Sometimes one just has to start over. Speaking from my own experience in writing. LOL

The new field guide Native Bees of the Lower Rio Grande Valley by Paula Sharp is out. I have my five minutes of fame as my photos of the Strand’s Carpenter Bee are used! The males are tough to photograph because they rarely stop. Photographed @riceuniversity

@WarrantyViolatr Yeah I think we r in agreement. So what is taking the place of research if your worst case scenario comes

Evidence that our Great Horned Owl ⁦@RiceUniversity⁩ is still around.

@WarrantyViolatr Yes it’s too bad but Universities and institutions like yours should become more efficient in how they use overhead. There is a lot of administrative bloat.

@incalcitrant_ Please enlighten me with your brilliance. I am always hoping to learn from the above average. Don’t keep to yourself.

@mbeisen But as noted in my initial post, it may soon become hard to hold onto that view. I still believe (hope?) that we r in a more fortunate situation than other countries, that is in terms of freedom to pursue science. But the future is uncertain.

@mbeisen Hmmm. I m speaking from my own experience in my own field.

@WarrantyViolatr Finally, a common and imminent enemy that could unite the world. World peace may be attainable.

Hard Rock Geology above the Challenger Deep | Scripps Institution of Oceanography ⁦@e8chin⁩

@evornithology LOL. If they are serious about this, they should first start replacing Vice President and Vice chancellor jobs with AI.

This Screech-Owl was calling above our head. @riceuniversity

I love sparrows. These are the three most common sparrows we detect flying overhead in the fall with our microphones in Houston, TX @RiceUniversity. They come down from 2000 km away to winter in grasslands along the Gulf Coast.

When things get crazy, I like to go back and read this paper. It reminds me that science can be fun. And funny. Enjoy.

@J_Wise_geology @RiceUniversity AI chatbots do. LOL!

Longspurs in Waco, TX. Thick-billed and Lapland Longspurs together. They gather in tight acrobatic flocks, twisting and turning across the open fields. I grew up thinking they were sparrows, but recent genetic work shows that they are uniquely their own, more closely related to new world warblers or tanagers.

@e8chin that's great emily!

Soviet CCCP era geologic maps, 1950s. A major driver of making these geologic maps was the global pursuit of natural resources. For good and ill.