The chair-side bookshelves this evening. #books #shelfie

An old favourite: What sank the Titanic? Snowflakes... Patient, well-organised snowflakes. #iceberg #snowflakes #Titanic #Greenland

I wonder, do cats curl the other way round in the southern hemisphere? Here are my two curled up in front of the fire. #coriolis #cats #geography

I went for a routine scan the other day and the medic said I was completely normal. So, that's officially my current status: "completely normal".

Fast falls the eventide. Good afternoon from Marbury.

Sunday morning selfie. You know it’s cold in the house when I’m wearing my Ecuador hat! This is my go-to indoor hat. Good morning from Marbury.

A random early-morning #shelfie from my studio. Good morning from Marbury. #Books #BookSky

50-words-exactly #writingprompt (apple) I told myself one bite could do no harm, and so I bit. God knows, I didn’t mean to cause the trouble that I did. It was a stupid place to plant a tree. I know that you agree, because you took a bite as well when you saw me.

From my bed, If I leave the curtains open I can see the stars, Or, in the day time, Jackdaws Doing cartwheels in the narrow strip of sky Above the house.

The moon, caught in the sunrise. Good morning from Marbury. #sky #sunrise #moon #Cheshire.

I don't know how I missed it previously, but I just found a 2017 paper about glacier microbiology that I think wins the prize for the paper citing the greatest number of my publications (11)! And for some of them it was not just to say they were wrong! www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #glaciers

Good morning from Marbury. My #suntise #sky today.

#dog #poem #DogSky I've been thinking about one of my old dogs, Gust. He was a very special sort of a dog and I still miss him. The day after we had to have him put to sleep I wrote this poem:

A new-year #shelfie. #books #library #BookSky

The TV news seems to be tracking my adventures from the 1980's. I was in Ukraine and Russia in 1981, in Venezuela (briefly) in 1986, and in Greenland and Denmark many times from 1984 onwards. I was also in the USA many times, but have no plans to go back!

Around the village today…

I’m struggling so I made a to-do list; it’s my usual strategy. This is my first list of the new year. It has only one item on it. I’m giving myself until Monday. #NewYear #timemanagement

But since it is New Year, to celebrate another circumnavigation here’s one of my favourite selfies: years ago, me from behind, painting one of my portraits of Mahler. #selfie #portrait #painting #Mahler #art

So, it’s a new year. If nobody had told me I don’t think I would have known. I didn’t make any resolutions but I know what they would have been if I had, and I would have already broken all of them.

For the last #DailyNature day of the month, a photo of the view out of my living room and into the garden, across the pot plants and into the Great Outdoors. Thank you for the encouragement and the reminder to keep our eyes and ears open and to notice what we are lucky to have around us.

December #DailyNature A trip to the coast, searching the marshes in vain for a Hen Harrier, but finding Marsh Harriers at least.

Life is short, and Christmas is back in the box.

#DailyNature The gathering.

#DailyNature on my morning walk: tree bark… Larch, I think. Good morning from Marbury.

#amreading my Christmas present. #BookSky

It looks like being a quiet Christmas on the canal past our house… shut because of the bank-breach a few miles upstream at Whitchurch.

For the #DailyNature challenge today here is a little Great Tit who went out of his way to get my attention on the lane today. He kept staring at me and repeating “Pip Pip Peew, Pip Pip Peew. I said it back to him but he just kept repeating it. Does anyone here speak Great Tit?

Show me how your 2025 went.

#DailyNature Up the lane, over the fields, along the canal. Perhaps none of it entirely “natural”, but with nature to be found! And the birds seem happy enough to accept the telegraph poles and wires.

Clouds reflected in the canal. The moon in a bucket. The sky in the palm of my hand. A raindrop falling into the pond makes a circle bigger than the sun. #DailyNature

Found this old video of me explaining what Physical #Geography is all about... evidently the clarity of my whiteboard work was one of my great strengths, ha ha! #messy (It worked well in live class or on video, but looks a mess in this still shot! Video link in alt text if you're interested).

Rain is falling. It's a dense, slow, determined rain... and I'm wondering if raindrops remember the sea. #DailyNature day 15. #NatureWriting #rain

We can look at Nature in different ways. One day, a kingfisher inspires the poet in us. The next, something illuminates a numerical relationship. Today, I give you the flow law for ice and a shear stress equation. These will get you a reasonable way into understanding how glaciers move! #DailyNature

The towpath is bustling with winter thrushes just now: mixed flocks of Redwings and Fieldfares marauding through the canal-side hedgerows. Here's a Redwing that I glimpsed between the branches on my lunchtime walk today, showing up nicely against a rare patch of blue sky. #DailyNature #UKBirding

Jupiter was riding the shoulder of Gemini this morning, but my camera-phone saw only a tiny blurred blob. I asked it about the Twins and it gave me a blank look. A crow nearby laughed and said "Why are you interested in the stars?" as it waited for one to rise up over the horizon. #DailyNature

I was lucky to have a career writing & talking about nature. For today's #DailyNature challenge I'd like to offer a paragraph from a book I wrote about #glaciers, and a photo of one of my old field sites in Greenland. It's an old photo but our experiences in Nature can stay with us. #NatureWriting

My sky this afternoon, and my contribution today to the #DailyNature challenge. “Crepuscular rays” are always a favourite!

Clouds have stories. Some are complicated: Lapse rates and the Coriolis force. Some seem simple: You will catch the rain if you go out to feed the horse! This one says: you’d better take a coat, of course! #DailyNature

“Nature” closed my usual road home with flooding today, but also gave me a nice sunset for my (extended) drive home! #DailyNature #Cheshire #UKCountryside

Afternoon walk. #DailyNature. The lane, the stream, the bridge at the canal, A hedge of trees, the towpath and a flooded field. Briefly a Kingfisher Bursts through from another world, Is everything for a moment, then gone.

#DailyNature day 7. Sometimes in life you can choose what to focus on. Sometimes you feel you have no control over that. Sometimes everything seems to be in focus, sometimes nothing. But with a fancy phone and an understanding of your f-stops, of course, it’s all OK.

In the end It will not be the north face of the Eiger Or a battle with your nemesis That finishes you off, But emptying the kitchen bin Or trying to pull off an awkward sock, Or the guilt when you remember you forgot to send A thank you letter to a now-departed friend. #poem

Pondering the #DailyNature challenge, with so many facets to nature at so many scales all around us, I remembered a video cartoon I once made for students about how a lot of Earth's "nature" derives from the planet's astronomical context youtu.be/i6K_N9lk3Z8?... day & night, seasons, sun's energy...

This photo isn’t from today, but it’s a much more cheerful view of my local countryside than I would have captured in today’s cold, grey wind and rain so I’m cheating a bit using it for today’s #DailyNature. Will try harder tomorrow! #Cheshire #countryside

#DailyNature day 4. Snapshots from an evening stroll to the mere in our village. Sunset reflected in calm water to a soundtrack of hundreds of jackdaws settling down to roost for the night in those trees on the other side of the water.

For today’s #DailyNature I’ve gone micro… this is moss growing in the groove at the bottom of the driver’s-side window of my meticulously maintained car. The moral? Perhaps that nature always wins in the end.

A somewhat eclectic driving-home playlist coming up from my favourites this afternoon. #Music. Carrie Newcomer, Avril Lavigne, Pete Atkin and Bjork.

We start early & before dawn our ears tell us as much about our surroundings as our eyes do. This Tawny Owl did try to help, though, putting himself in silhouette against the pre-dawn sky. With sound on you’ll hear him calling, too. #DailyNature Sorry 4 quality: he was far away & I only had phone.

For my first post to December’s #DailyNature challenge, a picture of my village to remind me that daily nature doesn’t necessarily need an expedition into the wilderness. Whether you live in town or, like me, in the countryside, nature is to be found in small corners as well as big landscapes.

Two of yesterday’s skies. Which would be a good title for a book. #sunrise #sky #GoodMorning #Cheshire