Ferris Jabr
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ferrisjabr.bsky.social
Ferris Jabr
@ferrisjabr.bsky.social
13K followers 730 following 650 posts
NYT bestselling author of Becoming Earth (Random House, 2024), being translated into 12+ languages ✵ Contributing Writer, New York Times Magazine ✵ Gardener, baker, naturalist ✵ 🇱🇧🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈 ✵ Surname rhymes with neighbor ✵ https://www.ferrisjabr.com
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ferrisjabr.bsky.social
Kestrels are such handsome birds. Lots out and about today, their plumage even more striking than usual. This shot captures the colors and patterns well.
A male kestrel mid-flight above a meadow in late fall. His blue-gray wings, accented with dark tips and white dots, are spread wide; his coppery red tail, dipped in black, is fanned out. His back is copper flecked black, his head blue, his face white, his black beak small and sharply curved. He appears to be glancing over his shoulder at the viewer.
November 22, 2025 at 11:08 PM
ferrisjabr.bsky.social
2025 in pressed flowers from our garden
A nine-squared collage of pressed flowers arranged on black and white backgrounds. Detailed individual descriptions are in the quoted thread.
November 21, 2025 at 9:11 PM
ferrisjabr.bsky.social
Two red roses, pressed and arranged ying yang style Nigella, aka love in a mist, harvested when red-striped, balloon-like seed pods were developing. Pods ensconced in feathery foliage. A meadow-like arrangement of blue nigella flowers, lavender, and tall, thin, yellow-flowered coreopsis. Four pressed flowers in a neat row: a reddish purple echinacea in the middle, two peachy gold calendulas on either side, and two taller dark blue scabiosas
November 21, 2025 at 9:09 PM
ferrisjabr.bsky.social
Moving onto darker shades against a white background:
A series of long slender pressed flowers on white poster board: delphinium and mallow in shades of mauve; a pink peony in the middle; and a red oriental poppy flanked by spiky blue sea holly.
November 21, 2025 at 9:04 PM
ferrisjabr.bsky.social
I harvested and pressed various flowers from our garden throughout the past year. Now I’m experimenting with arrangements. First up, relatively bright colors against a dark background:
Five yellow rudbeckia blooms on long thin stems, pressed and arranged neatly on black poster board. A meadow-like medley of pressed flowers in shades of red, orange, and yellow: yarrow, geum, rudbeckia, columbine, coreopsis Penstemon with clusters of tubular scarlet blooms, now flattened but still vibrant Pressed flowers in shades of pink: peony, dahlia, anemone
November 20, 2025 at 6:41 PM
Reposted by Ferris Jabr
usha.bsky.social
The bookshelf in our beautiful seminar room @ksjatmit.bsky.social is filled with books by former fellows. Want to be next? Applications to our fellowship are open and on our website. @annaleen.bsky.social @ferrisjabr.bsky.social @tomzellerjr.com @s-r-m.bsky.social and Melanie Kaplan. Please share.
November 19, 2025 at 6:25 PM
ferrisjabr.bsky.social
From the same video, a closeup of an ancient leaf gingerly peeled from rock and suspended between acetate sheets. You can see its colors, veins, and even blemishes that might be spots of damage from weather or insects.

A relic from a different Earth, another world, yet instantly familiar.
Closeup of an exceptionally well preserved leaf from around 15 million years ago, sandwiched between transparent acetate sheets. It is yellow-brown with visible veins, specks of black and brown, and somewhat jagged edges.
November 19, 2025 at 5:55 PM
ferrisjabr.bsky.social
In this fantastic video (timestamp adjusted), you can glimpse the autumnal burgundy of a freshly excavated Miocene leaf, which quickly fades to black. Hosted by @martinebotany.bsky.social
www.youtube.com/watch?t=239&...
Plants Are Cool, Too! Episode 2 : Fossilized Forests!
YouTube video by PlantsAreCoolToo
www.youtube.com
November 19, 2025 at 5:48 PM
ferrisjabr.bsky.social
In Idaho's Clarkia fossil beds, ~15-million-yr-old leaves are sandwiched between rock. When exposed, the leaves momentarily retain their original colors—red, copper, sometimes even a chlorophyllic hue—before oxidizing and fading.

A sedimentary scrapbook. Reverse polaroids from Earth's deep past.
Sedimentary block containing fossil leaves from the Clarkia Lake. The central leaf is reddish-brown, boat-shaped, and almost intact, surrounded by fragments of darker, almost black leaves. Photo: Dr. Yige Zhang. A laurel leaf, newly excavated in the field, exhibiting its original autumnal red hue. Photo: Margret Steinthorsdottir and Helen K Coxall.
November 19, 2025 at 5:44 PM
ferrisjabr.bsky.social
Cardinals: FOOD! MINE! MOVE!

Juncos: a precious morsel! spilled here? perhaps, if quick, I might partake…

Corvids: Once more we deign to accept these middling tributes, these inadequate oblations: mere gestures to the innate superiority of Aves, to the obvious divinity of all things feathered
rodger.bsky.social Rodger Sherman @rodger.bsky.social · 11d
Do birds think that bird feeders are

—magical boxes that grow food
—me doing a terrible job of storing my precious seeds, allowing birds to steal some
—me intentionally feeding them
November 14, 2025 at 9:23 PM
ferrisjabr.bsky.social
Working from 1886-1936, the Blaschkas used innovative techniques to emulate the colors, forms, & textures of real plants, meticulously joining numerous individual parts on wire frames, melting glass on glass, and often coating and adorning the glass with resins, gelatins, cotton fibers, and paint.
Glass models of apple blossoms replicating their delicate gradients of pink and white. Closeup of potentilla flower revealing extraordinary detail, such as petal and leaf veins and tiny hairlike stamens. Closeup of glass leaves revealing gelatin veins. Glass model of pitcher plant demonstrating numerous different textures, from glossy and smooth to wrinkled, rippled, jagged, and fibrous.
November 14, 2025 at 7:27 PM
ferrisjabr.bsky.social
Recently visited the Glass Flowers at Harvard, a collection of 4,300 extraordinarily realistic glass models of plants crafted by the Blaschkas, a father and son team of sculptors

That’s right, these are all made primarily of GLASS — a fact difficult to accept given how accurate & lifelike they are
An overview shot of a portion of the collection: a long window box with wooden frames filled with glass models of plants carefully arranged and labeled on white backgrounds, as though part of a 3D herbarium. From this distance, they are indistinguishable from real plants. Glass model of maple leaves, featuring blended molten glass that mimics the red hues of autumn foliage A glass model of a Columbine (Aquilegia) with parsley-like leaves and pendulous, faintly red and yellow flowers that look like swans huddled together, necks touching and wings flared out. Glass model of a Potentilla with almost ferny foliage and simple, open-faced yellow flowers with fuzzy centers.
November 14, 2025 at 7:17 PM
ferrisjabr.bsky.social
Every now and then I remember that sponges are ANIMALS — that these seeming hybrids of plant and rock; these sessile, porous, tissue-and-organ-less barrels, tubes, and blobs are just as much an animal as a falcon, wolf, or shark — and marvel once more at the wonderful weirdness of life on Earth.
Sponge biodiversity and morphotypes at the lip the wall site in 60 feet of water. Included are the yellow tube sponge, Aplysina fistularis, the pink vase sponge, Niphates digitalis, the red encrusting sponge, Spiratrella coccinea, and the gray rope sponge, Callyspongia sp. Caribbean Sea, Cayman Islands. Date 23 May 2007 Source NOAA Photo Library: reef3859 Xestospongia testudinaria is a species of barrel sponge in the family Petrosiidae Nederlands: Vaassponzen (xestospongia testudinaria) Date 2 May 2007 (original upload date) Source Transferred from nl.wikipedia to Commons. Author Albert Kok at Dutch Wikipedia This series of photographs represents the biodiversity found off the coast of Roscanvel, in the Fiistère, including several species of encrusting sponges, whose colours vary from whitish to orange. Date 2 December 2020 (upload date) Source Diverses éponges encroûtantes Author Olivier Dugornay The freshwater sponge, Spongilla lacustris, in the Hanford Reach of the Columbia River in Washington State, USA. 15 August 2008 Author: Kirt L. Onthank
November 14, 2025 at 3:10 PM
ferrisjabr.bsky.social
The first ever images of baby planets forming in the discs of dust and gas surrounding their respective stars. How thrilling that we can actually observe the birth of other worlds from so far away!

www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2025...
www.eso.org/public/unite...
HT @drfunkyspoon.bsky.social
The black void of space separates a bright white ring from a larger, hazy bluish gray halo. Just to the side of the bright white ring there is a small yellowish dot: a baby planet forming. "The newborn planet WISPIT 2b is eating its way through its dusty “cradle” as it orbits its parent star. This image, taken with ESO's Very Large Telescope, is the first clear image of a baby planet in a multi-ringed disc." WIde Separation Planets In Time (WISPIT): A gap-clearing planet in a multi-ringed disk around the young solar-type star WISPIT 2; Richelle van Capelleveen et al. Research published in 2025 An amber-colored, vaguely ovoid blob of dust and gas in space with dark regions. A bright spot near the center is a baby planet forming. "Astronomers led by a group at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany have captured a spectacular snapshot of planetary formation around the young dwarf star PDS 70. By using the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) — one of the most powerful planet-hunting instruments in existence — the international team has made the first robust detection of a young planet, named PDS 70b, cleaving a path through the planet-forming material surrounding the young star" "This research was presented in two papers, entitled “Discovery of a planetary-mass companion within the gap of the transition disk around PDS 70” and “Orbital and atmospheric characterization of the planet within the gap of the PDS 70 transition disk”, both [published] in Astronomy & Astrophysics" in 2018.
November 8, 2025 at 2:32 PM
Reposted by Ferris Jabr
wrenandbee.bsky.social
Here are four outstanding books I’ve read this year ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Each one tackles how we shape our natural world. And how, in turn, it shapes us.

Each one does it in its own unique way.

I highly recommend them all.

@ferrisjabr.bsky.social @chloedalton.bsky.social @johnvaillant.bsky.social
November 6, 2025 at 1:03 PM
ferrisjabr.bsky.social
Thank you! 🙏🏼
November 7, 2025 at 9:13 PM
ferrisjabr.bsky.social
Thanks so much for having me! It was a great conversation!
November 7, 2025 at 9:13 PM
ferrisjabr.bsky.social
Join me Sat Nov 8, 1PM at Boston's @museumofscience.bsky.social for a family-friendly presentation about our living planet, based on my book Becoming Earth. We'll learn how life transformed Earth over billions of years, making it the world we've known. Blue Wing Stage (w/ a view of the giant globe!)
Poster for described event featuring Museum of Science logo, photo of giant globe exhibit, and cover of Ferris Jabr's book Becoming Earth
November 7, 2025 at 5:51 PM
ferrisjabr.bsky.social
Wednesday Nov 5 I’ll be at my alma mater Tufts with Pulitzer winner and MIT KSJ director @usha.bsky.social discussing the importance of science journalism in this moment and the lessons and tools it offers us all

Free and open to public w/ registration
www.tuftstickets.com/event/lighti...
Poster for described event. Text: How science journalism can help us all navigate a new dark age. Wednesday November 5 Tufts University Olin 012 6PM Featuring Ferris Jabr and Usha Lee McFarling
October 28, 2025 at 6:07 PM
ferrisjabr.bsky.social
Luminaries, bats, spider web, kraken (paper, yarn, paint)
Three paper luminaries made from black paper lunch bags, featuring silhouettes of a cat, moon, and owl, illuminated from within Large spider web made of black yarn suspended across a wall and window beneath dozens of paper bats arranged in a swoosh A green and black kraken with giant eyes, glowing spots, and crinkly tentacles made of paper and paint
October 27, 2025 at 8:29 PM
ferrisjabr.bsky.social
Broomsticks (foraged branches, rattan, string)
Two DIY witch brooms suspended on the wall. One has a relatively short and straight handle. The other has a prominent arch.
October 27, 2025 at 8:24 PM
ferrisjabr.bsky.social
Window silhouettes (black poster board)
Three photos of black paper cutouts taped against windows, featuring the silhouettes of a witch and bubbling cauldron, spooky tree and owl, and a haunted house with numerous windows and turrets.
October 27, 2025 at 8:22 PM
ferrisjabr.bsky.social
Monster door (poster board, paint)
Photo of a wooden front door embellished with angry paper eyes with concentric circles of green, yellow, and red and large bloody paper fangs, making the door itself look like part of a larger monster.
October 27, 2025 at 8:20 PM
ferrisjabr.bsky.social
We recently hosted a spooky season celebration. I tried to make most of the decor from recyclable / repurposed materials to reduce waste.

🎃👻🦇🧵of a few favorites:

Spell book (paper, clay, mod podge, fake eye, paint)
A DIY prop spell book with a wrinkled purplish cover, weathered pages at the edges, a hazel eye staring out from the center, and small bronzed metal embellishments.
October 27, 2025 at 8:15 PM
ferrisjabr.bsky.social
Made some Miyazaki soot sprite cake bites. Chocolate cake, chocolate buttercream, chocolate shell, and sprinkles.

Susuwatari (ススワタリ, 煤渡り), also known as soot gremlins or dust bunnies, are fuzzy, golf ball-sized sprites, featured in My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away.
A plate of round chocolate cake bites decorated to look like Miyazaki soot sprites with chocolate sprinkles for fuzz and colorful star sprinkles to mimic the candies they eat. A screen shot from Spirited Away showing the sprites walking around with handfuls of bumpy, somewhat star-shaped Japanese candy konpeitō
October 25, 2025 at 9:12 PM