Sangeeth Sailas

Happy to see our work finally out!

Seasonal variation in coprophagic foraging in alpine choughs Pyrrhocorax graculus Coprophagy, defined as the ingestion of faeces sourced from either self (autocoprophagy), conspecific animals (allocoprophagy), or heterospecific animals (heterocoprophagy), is recognized as a physio...

Happy to share that my first paper with #KristinaBeck just got out in @avianbiology.bsky.social! We first documented coprophagic behavior in #Alpinechough, likely linked to a seasonal diet shift and/or nutritional benefits. 💩🦠

doi.org/10.1002/jav....

Foraging sequence:
youtu.be/05O6BjnKQ4g?...

These birds eat poop, but only sometimes. Why?
Poop-eating, or coprophagy, is super common in the animal world, but it's not well understood in birds.
Researchers in Germany documented 1422 "excretion events" in alpine choughs (a member of the crow family) & found major seasonal differences
🧪

Breeding seasonality in Charadriiformes on the Andean Altiplano is influenced by rain and possibly flood risk The Andean Altiplano in South America represents a remarkable mountain ecosystem with unique wildlife. However, knowledge of breeding ecology for birds inhabiting Andean Altiplano is scarce, relying ...

New paper with @calonectris.bsky.social on Andean shorebirds phenology is out in Ecosphere @ecologicalsociety.bsky.social, where we combined citizen-science and field data to decipher nest timing of understudied species: esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... #shorebird #bird #PhDstudy

New wadertales blog on how quickly juvenile godwits learn to feed efficiently through their first winter:
wadertales.wordpress.com/2026/02/05/l...
From new @asab.org paper led by Josh Nightingale:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
#ornithology

We’re hoping to reach £10,000 this weekend to secure Little Tern wardening at Beacon Ponds in 2026.

Every share helps. Thank you.
🔗 gofund.me/31d302f20

Thank you Phyllis! 😁🦉

To know how Little Owls 🦉 achieve this, through shifts in prey composition 🪲🦗🐁 that are dependent on habitat quality and weather, see the paper!

Big thanks to our collaborators from Switzerland @vogelwarte.bsky.social @matthiastschumi.bsky.social, the Netherlands and Slovakia!

From 40 nestboxes and 58 broods, >40,000 prey delivered, we found that across populations, provisioning rates and biomass increased with habitat quality (area of grasslands, gardens and hedges) around the nestbox.

We also found that high-quality habitats buffered against adverse weather effects 💨🧊

Habitat‐Dependent Provisioning Patterns Are Modulated by Weather Conditions in a Rapidly Declining Farmland Raptor We monitored parental food provisioning of Little Owls in four European countries with contrasting farmland structure using nestbox cameras and demonstrated that across all countries, provisioning ra...

A PhD chapter that I'm very proud of is finally out in @ecol-evol.bsky.social!🦉

Using nestbox cameras from 4 countries, we explored interactive effects of habitat quality &weather on provisioning &prey composition 🪱🪲🐀in Little Owls -a rapidly declining farmland raptor.
#RaptorResearch
#Ornithology

Room for optimism: Editor–reviewer interaction networks reveal positive outcomes of enhanced board diversity Our results show that editorial diversification is a practical lever for making peer review more inclusive and better aligned with the global distribution of ecological research. These changes make t...

Diversity=good:
“Our results show that editorial diversification is a practical lever for making peer review more inclusive & better aligned w the global distribution of ecological research. These changes make publication process fairer & improve the quality+global impact of the papers published.”

First two pages of the comic. Page one features a Kittiwake in the sky wondering where all the birds have gone. Page two shows how climate change impacts the diet of seabirds. One fish looks healthy, the other ones looks smaller and poorer quality.

Grab a cuppa and read our Seabird Poo comic! ➡️ http://www.bto.org/S... ☕📖

Discover how seabird scientists collected bird poo and analysed its DNA contents to determine the types of prey consumed by Shags and Kittiwakes! 😮 #Ornithology

✏️ Illustrations by Anna Dupont-Crabtree

Tawny owls are turning to street lighting to help them hunt - BES Tawny owls are turning to street lighting to help them hunt - BES is the largest scientific society for ecologists in Europe. We're working towards a world in which nature and people thrive.

Tawny owls normally rely on sound to hunt, but new research being presented today at #BES2025 finds that owls in Glasgow are adapting to noisy roads by using street lights to hunt.

www.britishecologicalsociety.org/tawny-owls-a...

Very, very cool study looking at the effect of local population density on vocal individuality in Little Owls from my colleagues that is finally out!

#Ornithology #RaptorResearch

Sensory pollutants have negative but different effects on nestbox occupancy and breeding performance of a nocturnal raptor across Europe Anthropogenic noise and artificial light at night (ALAN) are expanding globally, acting as pervasive sensory pollutants that can disrupt wildlife beha…

#ornithology
#RaptorResearch
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Thank you! 🪶

#addBirder

@malavika-m.bsky.social and I had a very successful birdwatching morning today with my supervisor Martin Šálek, and got great views of hovering Great Gray Shrikes and Rough-legged Buzzards in South Bohemia! 🦅 🐦 Unfortunately the last sunny morning for a while..

📣 Apply now for the 🌵CaCTüS 3-month fully funded internship in Germany in 2026!
Work on ML, theor. neuroscience, computational psychiatry, behavioral experiments or data analysis at a top institution in Tübingen. For students facing barriers in higher education. 👉 cactus-internship.tuebingen.mpg.de

Hen Harrier ‘Susie’, whose chicks were stamped to death in 2022, has been found dead on a North Pennines grouse moor with gunshot injuries If ever there was an example demonstrating the high level of persecution faced by Hen Harriers on UK grouse moors, the lack of consequences for the offenders, and the lack of justice for the victim…

Hen Harrier Susie, whose chicks were stamped to death on a Yorkshire Dales grouse moor in 2022, has been found dead on a N Pennines grouse moor with gunshot injuries.

18+ months of silence about this crime from the police & Natural England.

#RaptorResearch

raptorpersecutionuk.org/2025/11/14/h...

The date is set for the next EOU Fledglings Meeting 🐥 in Gdansk, Poland! Share the news with your peers! 🦆

🐦Master Thesis Opportunity at Swiss Ornithological Institute @vogelwarte.bsky.social

Explore the drivers of natal dispersal timing in birds through a meta-analysis. Ideal for students skilled in R and interested in avian ecology.

www.vogelwarte.ch/en/about-us/...

Experimental Exposure to Noise Affects Hunting Behavior Already From a Young Age in a Nocturnal Acoustic Predator | doi.org/10.1002/ece3... | Ecology and Evolution | #ornithology #RaptorResearch 🪶

We're looking for a new postdoc on our new BBSCR grant (Graham Taylor/Tim Guilford/Cait Newport). See link below!

my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

An adult red kite feeding its nestlings, illustrating active parental care during the breeding season. Photo: Camera trap, Swiss Ornithological Institute.

Fig. 4 from the article: Capture probability in relation to the time since detection of the decoy predator for red kite breeding pairs with different brood sizes.

NEW PAPER: Parental anti-predator investment in red kites shifts with food conditions, reflecting both offspring vulnerability and reproductive value, with their relative importance changing across nestling age.

➡️ vist.ly/45uxb

#ornithology #birds #RaptorResearch @vogelwarte.bsky.social

Flyer for special issue on passive acoustic monitoring

📣 CALL FOR PAPERS 📣

Special issue:
FROM CHIRPS TO INSIGHTS: PASSIVE ACOUSTIC MONITORING FOR APPLIED ORNITHOLOGY

More info: vist.ly/43vfp

Guest editors: Jan O. Engler, Jenn Foote, @silvereyedom.bsky.social Simon Thorn

#ornithology #birds 🪶🧪

The State of the World's Raptors - Pre-order | The Peregrine Fund Bert Ooms New Book: State of the World's Raptors Pre-order Now! With over half of all birds of prey experiencing population declines, prioritizing conservation efforts is crucial. The new book State of the World’s Raptors, led by Executive Vice President of Science and Conservation Christopher McC...

The new book State of the World’s Raptors, led by Executive Vice President of Science and Conservation Christopher McClure, PhD, provides an original approach to setting priorities for the conservation of raptors across the globe. 

Pre-order now: https://bit.ly/SotWR25

#RaptorResearch #Ornithology

Was super excited to present our global analysis of raptor🦉🦅 mortality, effects of spec traits and Human footprint @eounion.bsky.social #EOU2025 in Bangor this week. Attended so many interesting talks and I'm thankful to all the new friends and connections made in the bird world :) #RaptorResearch

Smelly birds at #EOU2025 🐦

@dillensegerg.bsky.social gives a very interesting talk at #EOU2025 @eounion.bsky.social on the effect of rainfall on breeding phenology in Andean shorebirds! 🐣☔