The collecting for surveying Cambridge college garden biodiversity is complete; now it's identifying the hundreds of insects etc that we've collected. A slight diversion from that work was this visiting sparrowhawk - our sparrows were less than delighted at its sudden appearance.

It's back to the Pacific today: to Tahiti for this year's Partula tree snail reintroductions. We hope to build on least year's success. This year we have participation in the field from London Zoo, Animal Kingdom , Woodland Park Zoo

Partula releases today: we are trying a new monitoring technique with Partula nodosa using RFID tags. We also visited Tiapa valley to look for Partula incrassa but without success; that's often the way with Partula field research.

On Raiatea today reintroducing Partula navigatoria descended from the last wild snails I collected in 1991. This was supposed to happen back in 2020. We also found an excellent site for Partula hebe next year (hopefully)

Yesterday was a busy day for Partula conservation. As well as a full day of releases of snails back into the forest on Moorea we had the opening and stocking of the new reserve at Fare Natura. Fantastic to see that go from my wild idea exactly two years ago to this

2nd day of monitoring on Moorea; still great progress with good dispersal and very little mortality despite us finding several of the predatory Euglandina. They may be invasive monsters but I still have a soft spot for their elegance (a picture of one instead of Partula for once)

Today was the last Partula snail reintroduction of the year: Huahine island with more varia and the first rosea to be released since 2019

Today was monitoring day on Huahine and the last day for most of the team. What a day for a big find! Great results from the releases, but even better was finding this tiny one- the first wild-born Partula on Huahine for 31 years. Another great vindication of everyone's hard work

Some encouraging signs for Partula nodosa and affinis today; many released animals found again and many births. We also scouted out possible additional release sites for next year.

Today was a search for high altitude snails on Mt Aorai. Finding snails in this environment isn't easy. We did find some Critically endangered Samoana diaphana. The shell is extremely thin and translucent (hence 'diaphana'), the distinctive pattern is on the body inside the shell

Last field survey on Tahiti today: the southern point of Te Pari. Nothing unusual but good populations of Partula hyalina marmorata. The sort of patchy metapopualtions we found are probably natural for this species (one of few partulids not to be Critically Endangered or Extinct)

Partula reintroduction comes to an end for 2025 with a final monitoring in lovely Papehue valley on Tahiti. Nothing startling today but lots of newborn snails is encouraging. I really hope we can show success with Partula nodosa next year.

As we approach the beginning of the new academic year this year's Peterhouse Cambridge Biology Newsletter is now out islandbiodiversity.com/petnewsletter.…

My latest paper has just been published in PeerJ; this one was a really fun puzzle to solve. We identified an extinct predator on Mauritius from the holes it left in the shells of its prey. Evidence of an extinct snail predator peerj.com/articles/20112/ via PeerJ - the Journal of Life & Environment