Entering the postdoc world has vastly increased my sympathy for those curates in old novels who are desperately seeking a vacant parish where they can become a vicar and earn a living

Flooded bridge after heavy rain

Bog bush-cricket (Metrioptera brachyptera) - sat in some bog myrtle (Myrica gale), appropriately enough

Dark bush-cricket, Pholidoptera griseoaptera. Always nice to get a photo of this one, the adults have such a lovely chesnut colour but also tend to hide in brambles where you can't see them and chirp at you

Take a break from doomscrolling, relax and immerse yourself in exploring the Wildwoods... (I have a new single out) youtu.be/PeN4k-THfPs

Wood cricket, Nemobius sylvestris. Tiny little animals, but they make the most amazing sound!

Lesser stag beetle, Dorcus parallelipipedus. I think this species gets a bit overshadowed by its larger relative, but it's still a very impressive beastie!

Very proud to have been part of this awesome project - 11 experimental electronic musicians came together to make an acoustic album, now out for you to listen to! aemc2.bandcamp.com/album/undres...

Johnny was a patriot He bedecked the town With Union Jacks on ev'ry street All flying upside down

Heath grasshopper, Corthippus vagans. Brown and nondescript, but charming nonetheless, with a sandy colour to match the sandy heaths it lives on, as well as stripy legs and an orange abdomen which contrast rather nicely with the green gorse and purple heather

Woodland grasshopper, Omocestes rufipes - in black and red!

Trevor’s Virtual Cassette Library 112 ///landed.embraced.deaf. Welcome, traveler.
You’ve just tuned into Trevor’s Virtual Cassette Library, Episode 112.
This one’s titled Landed Embraced Deaf—your metaphysical coordinates: ///landed.embraced.deaf.This is a 90-minute sonic transmission.
Built for…

Sat in the woods with a little synth and an amp. Nice to keep things simple! youtu.be/GudaORtvmCk

Large marsh grasshopper, Stethophyma grossum. They live in sphagnum bogs, so I got very wet feet photographing them

Heya. I got a bit bored by people asking me how to navigate away from the cycles of exhaustion and exploitation that the academia seems exceptionally well inclined to produce. So I decided to run a workshop on it. An antiwork-antishop, in effect. Sign up below. janabacevic.net/against-acad...

Common green grasshopper, Omocestes viridulus. Poor thing has lost an antenna somewhere along the way, but is still a very handsome shade of green on the thorax which contrasts very nicely with those dark sides to the wings

What's doubly annoying is you can do good history using quantitative methods, but when you do it gets overlooked in favour of bad science with flashy answers We did some really nice (if I say so myself) epi analysis of historical data with proper context here, for example: doi.org/10.1017/ext....

I keep getting ads which have the basic message of "are you extremely terrible at your job? Don't worry, our AI tool can do your thinking for you!" Which definitely says something about how the tech firms view their customers

A rather cute mottled grasshopper (Myrmeleotettix maculatus) I met on Peel Hill

The lesser mottled grasshopper, Stenobothrus stigmaticus. A beautiful little animal which is amazingly well-camoflaged in the grass. The only place in the British Isles where you can reliably find it is on the Isle of Man, where I took these photos

I always struggle with 'how your research speaks to the major questions in the field' because, honestly, I'm not particularly interested in what the big boys are arguing about, and I don't believe for one minute they care what I have to say about it anyway

Common blue, Polyommatus icarus

"castles such as Watch Hill and Rougemont have become fortifications once more, sheltering not armoured knights but plants and animals. Birds and badgers have taken up residence in the structures built as homes for aristocrats." - me on castles and wildlife nehnetwork.wordpress.com/2025/06/03/j...

Any historians of science or environmental historians on here interested in collaborating on a project about the use of Caribbean plants as microscope dyes in 19th-20th centuries? I have a project outline, but I'd need a collaborator and an institution to help me put together a funding application

Common blue, Polyommatus icarus. The males are bright blue, the females are more subdued, but no less beautiful

Trevor’s Virtual Cassette Library 093 Astral Kitchen Trevor here, transmitting from home base Sollentuna, Sweden. This is your gateway to another immersive expedition through sound—Trevor’s Virtual Cassette Library 093 A 90-minute journey with a metaphysical flip at the halfway mark—perfect for a…

Green tiger beetle, Cicindela campestris

Common green grasshopper, Omocestes viridulus

My rule of thumb with quantitative data is that it's better to have simple graph or table which tells your reader something useful than a fancy analysis which tells your reader nothing because it's wrong

I'm delighted that @royalhistsoc.org has published our roundtable article on 'The Future of (Environmental) History'. This came out of a workshop in April 2023 with @northernenvhistory.bsky.social I've summarised our paper (link to OA article) in a blog 👇 blog.royalhistsoc.org/2025/07/27/f...

“We can choose to submit to the hopelessness of the world, dense, intoxicating as it is - or we can choose to find hope in every small nook and cranny, every minor act." Some great stuff in the latest MEANS, including two of our tracks! meansmag.bandcamp.com/album/hope-m...

Exciting news! A new publication by ‪@hibbertsalex.bsky.social, @islayshelbourne.bsky.social @thenickpepper.bsky.social @alexworsfold.bsky.social @robertsuits.bsky.social @jdroberts.bsky.social (amongst others) which developed from our first workshop back in 2025. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Small white (Pieris rapae)

Our thingy on environmental history is out! In which we talk about interdisciplinarity, scale, interdisciplinarity, landscapes, the place of the discipline within institutions, and interdisciplinarity again doi.org/10.1017/S008...

'archaeologists and local volunteers have managed to identify the ship and to piece together the surprising history of a vessel that witnessed some of the most dramatic events of the 18th century before finally being wrecked off Sanday in 1788.' 1/2

Sharing one of my favourites again. We showed how an ecological relationship between two parasitic worms (widespread coinfections) became an epistemic relationship: widespread folk knowledge of one worm promoted uptake of biomedical knowledge and treatment of the other doi.org/10.1093/trst...

Bird Book of the Dead no. 47 - Jamaican Petrel There have been several petrel extinctions, but as species that are often both pelagic and nocturnal it can be difficult to determine where extinctions happen. In the case of the Jamaican Petrel it hasn't been confirmed since 1879.

My feeling is always that sheep farming is part of our cultural heritage and it would be a shame to lose it entirely, but we don't need 13.8 million sheep, many of which are essentially ornamental and paid for by the state, and are also ecologically destructive. There's middle ground to be had here

Yesterday's sitting in the shade with a synth

I don't think I'd ever seen a grasshopper quite this shade of bright orange before! Didn't get a definitive species ID, but I think it's probably a common green (Omocestes viridulus)

Field grasshopper Corthippus brunneus sat in a sunbeam

I read about the government's NHS plans and think "improved and better-funded primary heathcare is very welcome, but I'm not at all convinced by these fancy new technologies." And then I get historical deja vu because we've been having this debate for the best part of a century, if not longer

Takeoff (Soldier beetle, Rhagonycha fulva)

What kind of society produces a generation of educated, skilled and motivated young people, tells them work is a moral good and that working hard is the greatest of virtues, and then won't *let* them work? What could possibly justify that sort of cruelty? www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Small skipper (Thymelicus sylvestris)

Ringlet (Aphantopus hyperantus) season is upon us

The mindset behind LLMs feels very alchemical to me. The philosopher's stone promised to turn lead into gold, and LLM boosters promise to turn terrible data into intelligence. 'Garbage in, garbage out' no longer applies: if you simply put enough garbage in, they say, you will magically get gold out

The more I look at this data, the less usable it seems

I can't say this was a particularly enjoyable paper to be involved in, but I think we were right to write it

Ecologists’ horror as nature reserves around the world are emptied of insects - with rising temperatures joining habitat destruction as likely causes: www.theguardian.com/environment/...