I thought this was a honey bee swarm at a distance but it’s the tree itself - I think this looks like a witches broom growth on this pine though I’ve never seen one quite like this before!

I came across two large conehead crickets yesterday - one on Bryher and one on Tresco in the Isles of Scilly - alongside several stridulating individuals on both St Martin’s and Bryher this summer, perhaps this suggests we have a breeding population on the islands now!

The tiniest common blue on Bryher, Scilly yesterday

explaining scary things in the news to your elected leaders www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Our endemic Scilly Pearl #apples are ripe around a week earlier than usual - they’re delicious with a balanced sweetness and acidity but don’t keep long at all - today is spent bottling the juice we pressed yesterday with cider beginning to bubble too…

A distinctive sound caught my ear walking home at the weekend - a little searching in the bracken and found this handsome large conehead calling! These were first recorded in the UK here on the Isles of Scilly in 2003 as a rare vagrant species from Europe but appear to be spreading northwards now

Listening to Robin Wall Kimmerer’s narrated essay in @emergencemagazine.bsky.social was perfectly timed - face to face with the vines to see what each plant needs, I can imagine the flow of carbon and oxygen between us in this brief moment of tending emergencemagazine.org/essay/becomi...

The grass here on the vineyard is incredibly dry after so little rain, but is nonetheless alive with the hum of grasshoppers and splashes of colour from common blue and small copper butterflies

Common centaury flowering between the vines here on St Martin’s (late for #wildflowerhour!)

Spotted my first cricket nymph of the year on the cat’s ears between the vines today!

@georgemonbiot.bsky.social hi George - I heard you might be in our neck of the woods! On the offchance you are, and would fancy stopping by to chat or try a wine/cider/beer/apple juice all made right here on the vineyard, we’d love to show you what we’re doing! Www.stmartinsvineyard.co.uk

Planting new vines today with the buzz of bees, call of birdsong and flit of common blue butterflies for company

Late for the #pinkfamily challenge but here are a couple of small-flowered catchfly between the vines on St Martin’s - not a common species on the mainland but still thriving here on Scilly! #wildflowerhour

Buff-tailed bumblebee worker enjoying the native bluebells which line the shadier edges of the vineyard on St Martin’s

Lovely to see the first common blues of the year out nectaring on the trefoils around the vineyard this morning

Home-made planting pouches - made from hessian sack to help green up our brand new pond with cuttings of water mint and water speedwell as well as crowfoot, curled pondweed and hornwort from a local pond

One of the most cynical bits of greenwashing I’ve ever seen - the idea that a factory farmed chicken can ‘thrive’ with such paltry concessions to welfare shows such a diminished, impoverished view of non-human lives that it’s straight up insulting

Sea kale - Crambe maritima - flowering at Old Town beach on St Mary’s, Isles of Scilly. Picked sparingly, the leaves are delicious!

Having spent my entire voting life being handed Tory government after Tory government, it’s beyond disappointing to finally have a @teamlabouruk.bsky.social government and find them even worse www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Bumblebed for the night…

First small copper of the year for me here on St Martin’s Vineyard!

We had some spare priming solution - a sugar/water mix - left over from bottling our latest batch of beers. We poured it onto the compost heap where everything organic goes - it seems the local bumblebees were determined to make sure it didn’t go to waste!

A few #tinyplant sightings around the vineyard today - none more than a few mm across! Field madder; changing forget-me-not; spotted medick and wall speedwell #wildflowerhour

I love finding these black oil beetles quietly grazing away around the vineyard - often blades of grass but sometimes flower petals such as daisies or this three-cornered leek #eatittobeatit

Minuscule wall speedwell amongst the native wildflowers which carpet the vineyard floor - just a few mm across and only fully open on a sunny day, these are a reward for the keen-eyed visitor!

Plenty of bumbles enjoying the apple blossom on the vineyard at the moment. One of my favourite things about spring is noticing and enjoying the continuous gentle buzz which lies just below conscious acknowledgment for much of the time and speaks of the vast rolling ecosystem which surrounds us

If you were tuned into Radio 4 at 6:35 on Sunday, you might have caught us live, but luckily iPlayer allows you to listen at a more sociable hour - we talk about how we got here, the ways we manage the land for wildlife as well as wine & future plans inc. forest garden! www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

A lovely surprise this morning - two hoopoe feeding in the grass in front of the winery!

It’s been a good year for violets on the vineyard - swathes of purple flowers shuddering in the breeze in the permanent grassland between the vines

Quite an incredible influx of black redstarts on Scilly - every time I walk around the tall hedges into another field on the vineyard, I’m greeted with a flash of charcoal grey and that red/orange tail as they zip from the wires to the grass in search of food

Buds beginning to break on the Orion vines here on St Martin’s in the spring sunshine - hope they can withstand a week of cold easterlies though - it’s currently gusting 40mph out there!

A whole host of these tiny earwig nymphs when we turned over a piece of wood today - perhaps one of the cutest finds of the year so far!

One of the best things about running our tiny regenerative vineyard is the opportunity to share the wildlife with visitors. We designed these spotter sheets - one for each season - which will be free for visitors & hopefully be fun for young & old to engage with our vineyard residents!

These stunning iridescent oil beetles are appearing all around the vineyard since the cold wind switched and the temperatures have warmed - coinciding with the now abundant buzz of cliff mining bees and other solitary bees with whose lives these beetles are entwined

Lovely to see sand martins foraging in the lee of the hedges here on the vineyard - our little islands off the coast must make a welcome stopping off point on their migration paths

These are the labyrinth fields on the northwest coast of St Martin’s - neither ancient nor static they change as stones are added or features modified by visitors over the years #scilly

A white stork circling over the cricket pitch on St Martin’s, Scilly in a stiff easterly breeze - apparently might be one of the @kneppwilding.bsky.social birds!

Beautiful bank of clouds backlit by the moon - this was the view when leaving the winery after a day spent bottling our 2023 sparkling cider which has been aging in tanks for the last 18 months

Still one of my favourite cartoons ever by @stephencollins.bsky.social - there was such an awful visceral recognition of this truth when I was working an office job! #spring

It’s that time of the year when the little flocks of linnets reappear and bounce chinking across the fields, foraging in the grassland below the vines

Peaches flowering in the polytunnel - these are always the first fruit blossom to appear on the vineyard each spring

Never fails to make me smile when I pass this on St Mary’s…

The sun setting over Tresco at the end of another stunning day - there are definitely worse places to go for a run after work than St Martin’s!

I was removing some old vines today and kept encountering these moth pupae - not quite sure of the species but the number I unearthed was very reassuring - in that there must be thousands around the vineyard! All carefully re-covered safely of course :)

Here’s an uncommon sight on #Scilly - first frost of the winter on the vineyard!

Finally field woundwort growing in the grassland beneath the vines here on the vineyard on St Martin’s #wildflowerhour

Sweet alyssum on the dunes; winter heliotrope on a patch of rubble; and alexanders from the roadside verge on St Mary’s #wildflowerhour

Some spring familiars - lesser celandine, dandelion, daisy and the coconut scented gorse all in flower on St Mary’s #wildflowerhour

A few more naturalised non-natives from a walk around St Mary’s - three-cornered leek, snowflake, osteospermum and periwinkle #wildflowerhour

Just a few of the naturalised daffodil varieties which can be found along roadsides, field margins and grassland around Scilly - the long history of bulb growing means many chances for these to establish #wildflowerhour