Daniel Villar
@daniel-a-villar
Conservation biologist and behavioural ecologist. Treasurer of Scientists for Labour. Postdoc at @durhamanthropology.bsky.social, DPhil from @biology.ox.ac.uk
Great fun to present some of my findings on drivers of the length of bird sex in the largest auditorium I’ve ever presented in at @isbe2026.bsky.social #ISBE2026 #behavioural_ecology #ornithology
One of these is the son of a senior civil servant, Rhodes scholar, and former academic. The other left school at 16, was a rock band manager, and earned a reputation as a bruiser on behalf of the right flank of the trade union movement
Fun day carrying the Labour banner at the Durham Miner’s Gala. Good weather, good music, interesting speeches
I prefer the animals to the other options (admittedly I’m a biologist, so of course I do)
I think that pie and mash, toad in the hole, and beef suet is not just up there, but better than a lot of French, Italian, etc. food
A very readable book on the very subject of the lost word of working class intellectual institutions
Realising that I look a bit like the Invisible Man when I go from my accustomed haunts in the Andean tropics to the hot and sunny lowlands
Ah yes, that famous religion which has always been loved and tolerated in Britain….Roman Catholicism (pics unrelated)
Excellent piece, but I think the most important part of it is this graph; for all the supposed revival of religion in Britain, it’s basically an online phenomenon primarily driven by American right wing monies rather than any organic evangelical revival
Seeing a lot of people claiming naming towns after people is un-British, wilfully forgetting the great legacy of Peter Lee, namesake of Peterlee, County Durham
The past is a different country — when finishing up his PhD the ornithologist Peter Grant (who at this point had lived in Canada four years) was offered a spot in the Canadian national hockey team
Real heads know it was Brutus grandson of Aeneas, part of Trojan diaspora (and definitely not something just made up by a monk sometime in the 8th or 9th centuries)
To just take the ward I reside in, we lost two good councillors to Reform — while at the same time the LibDems performed stronger than they have since 2008. Even here, the more viable strategy is to consolidate the left vote rather than pine after our imaged “natural” voter
This part in particular struck me as worrisome. A “veteran loyalist activist in Ballymena in his 60s” is no one’s idea of an out of touch liberal, and even he’s scared by the direction of public sentiment. And it’s driven by social media which spreads hate for profit, with no seeming end in sight
Another year, another post of the books I most enjoyed reading this year
Particularly like this passage. This is a generational opportunity for other counties to usurp the 80 year domination of the USA in science. But instead research is being cut in almost every country. The crown lies in the gutter, no one picks it up, an we are all worse off for it
2017 — clearly a very different era….I say, as if I don’t still own and wear the same overcoat, hat, scarf, and tie as in that photo