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Today I’ve borrowed another batch of bird photos (with permission) from Aussie biologist Scott Ritchie, a great photographer whose Facebook page is here. Scott’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them. Scott hails from Cairns.

I got up at six, heard light rain, made a coffee and checked the radar. There was quite a massive rain shower headed towards Cairns from the north. Anyway, I decided to take my time and just see how it panned out. There was a break after the big initial rain band, with rain ending around 8 to 830. My plan was to go to Redden Island and just concentrate on shorebirds because it was sort of dark outside. And I was trying out my 200 to 800 lens with the 1.4X teleconverter (max mag at 1120!). When I left, I saw that there was a new band of rain forming to our north. Bummer! I probably had about an hour hour and a half tops to get my birds.

And I did have fun with a couple of Pied Oystercatchers showing how they got their name. The little Red-capped Plover and the Greater Sand-Plover also put on a pretty good show. And I got a couple of terns in flight. It was fun to run into the gang just before the next rain band hit. Cheers and I hope you enjoy them.

Pied Oystercatcher [Haematopus longirostris] finds a succulent clam:

But it’s hard work getting it free from the shell:

He keeps trying while his mate keeps a hopeful eye.:

At last it’s coming free:

He washes the sand off the meat:

And down the hatch:

That was yummy!:

A Greater Sand-Plover [Anarhynchus leschenaultii] loosens up:

Shakes it loose:

And goes for a run on the beach!:

Caspian Tern [Hydroprogne caspia]:

Hovers looking for fish:

Red-capped plover [Anarhynchus ruficapillus]:

Doing his yoga stretches:

Crested Terns [Thalasseus bergii], Black-naped Terns (small ones; Sterna sumatrana). Please confirm the IDs!:

Reports suggest that Elon Musk is eyeing up a merger involving SpaceX, Tesla and xAI, but what does he hope to achieve by consolidating his business empire?

Yawning and deep breathing each have different effects on the movement of fluids in the brain, and each of us may have a distinct yawning "signature"

We pick the sci-fi novels we’re most looking forward to reading this month, from a new Brandon Sanderson to the latest from Makana Yamamoto

Researchers have found a way to make ordinary aluminum tubes float indefinitely, even when submerged for long periods or punched full of holes. By engineering the metal’s surface to repel water, the tubes trap air inside and refuse to sink, even in rough conditions. The technology could eventually be scaled up into floating platforms, ships, or even wave-powered energy systems.

In the early 1800s, Denmark’s government, medical community, church leaders and school teachers all united to promote the new smallpox vaccine, which led to a remarkably quick elimination of the disease in the capital

Members of the New Scientist Book Club give their take on Sierra Greer's award-winning science-fiction novel Annie Bot, our read for February – and the needle swings wildly from positive to negative

In this extract from the February read for the New Scientist Book Club, we meet the protagonist of Tim Winton’s Juice, driving across a scorched landscape in a future version of Australia

The New Scientist Book Club's February read is Tim Winton's novel Juice, set in a future Australia that is so hot it is almost unliveable. Here, the author lays out his reasons for writing it – and why he doesn't see it as dystopian

Elizabeth Hohmann is very interested in faeces, and spends her days sifting through stools to find those that could make the biggest difference to other people's health

Researchers at KAIST have developed a breakthrough technology that could dramatically improve our ability to image black holes and other distant objects. The team created an ultra precise reference signal system using optical frequency comb lasers to synchronise multiple radio telescopes with unprecedented accuracy. This laser based approach solves long standing problems with phase calibration that have plagued traditional electronic methods, particularly at higher observation frequencies.

I want to demonstrate to Michael Shermer that it’s possible for men like us to not talk about trans people constantly. If I can do it, so can he.

The post The Anti-Trans Obsessions of “Skeptic” Michael Shermer:  Hallucinating Imaginary Demons to Empower Actual Villains, Once Again. first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Order doesn’t always form perfectly—and those imperfections can be surprisingly powerful. In materials like liquid crystals, tiny “defects” emerge when symmetry breaks, shaping everything from cosmic structures to everyday technologies. Now, researchers have developed an AI-powered method that can predict how these defects will form and evolve in milliseconds instead of hours. By learning directly from data, the system accurately maps molecular alignments and complex defect behavior, even in situations where defects merge or split.

Order doesn’t always form perfectly—and those imperfections can be surprisingly powerful. In materials like liquid crystals, tiny “defects” emerge when symmetry breaks, shaping everything from cosmic structures to everyday technologies. Now, researchers have developed an AI-powered method that can predict how these defects will form and evolve in milliseconds instead of hours. By learning directly from data, the system accurately maps molecular alignments and complex defect behavior, even in situations where defects merge or split.

It’s 2050 and you’re living on Venus. This might come as a surprise due to the planet’s crushing surface pressures (~92 times of Earth) and searing surface temperatures (~465 degrees Celsius/870 degrees Fahrenheit), which is equivalent to ~900 meters (3,000 feet) underwater and hot enough to melt lead, respectively. But you’re not living on the surface. Instead, you’re safe and sound inside a lava tube habitat scanning data from the latest orbiter images while sipping on some habitat-made espresso.

Solar flares are one of the most closely watched processes in solar physics. Partly that’s because they can prove hazardous both to life and equipment around Earth, and in extreme cases even on it. But also, it’s because of how interestingly complex they are. A new paper from Pradeep Chitta of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research and his co-authors, available in the latest edition of Astronomy & Astrophysics, uses data collected by ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft to watch the formation process of a massive solar flare. They discovered the traditional model used to describe how solar flares form isn’t accurate, and they are better thought of as being caused by miniaturized “magnetic avalanches.”

A new study led by researchers from Aarhus University showed that amino acids spontaneously bond in space, producing peptides that are essential to life as we know it. Their findings suggest that the building blocks of life are far more common throughout space than previously thought, with implications for astrobiology and SETI.

Interval cancers are aggressive tumours that grow during the interval after someone has been screened for cancer and before they are screened again, and AI seems to be able to identify them at an early stage

Astronomers have solved a bit of a mystery that had them questioning whether one of the most extreme stars ever observed was about to explode. WOH G64, a massive red supergiant in the Large Magellanic Cloud, began behaving so strangely that researchers suspected it had evolved into a rare yellow hypergiant on the brink of supernova. But new observations from the Southern African Large Telescope reveal the star is still very much a red supergiant, yet still exhibiting strange behaviour.

NASA has completed its first major testing of nuclear reactor hardware for spacecraft propulsion in over 50 years, marking a crucial step toward faster, more capable deep space missions. Engineers at Marshall Space Flight Center conducted more than 100 ‘cold flow’ tests on a full scale reactor engineering development unit throughout 2025, gathering vital data on how propellant flows through the system under various conditions.