Long tailed tits in the branches. Tiny drawing of tiny birds For sale if anyone wants a small drawing done by a human who stood under a tree and watched how the birds live.

So, having managed 10 years of daily* weather journal drawings I thought I’d start the new year showing some This is not a resolution,and it won’t be a daily update, but here have a few days… (The point of the sketching is not perfection, it’s just doing it/ trying to get the feel if the day down)

For ten years, everyday, I’ve sketched the weather. Daily quick drawings, as a way of making me observe, think and pick up a pencil, a pen, a brush. I’m not stopping, but it’s worth celebrating the achievement. 46 sketchbooks, 3,558(?) sketches.

The wild hunt So mid winter isn’t all twinkling lights and jolly feasts. There are darker tales to be told… This year, here on the western hills of the uk, the sudden cold east wind, gusting with a hungry strength, has made the old dark stories of the wild hunt creep closer. ⬇️

Ah, almost midnight on Christmas Eve Time for some Aidan Moffat ghost stories for Christmas, followed by Dylan Thomas. Happy Christmas

Have you noticed that the dark solstice is when we as humans gather, eat, drink, give, laugh, love, for day after day? We face the long nights & push them back together. Like we are programmed to look for joy in the dark. Resistance is community joy, based on sharing and light Happy solstice

We hosted a wonderful event yesterday in our camping barn. A dear friend and neighbour, off on his next adventure… It was a honour and a privilege to be part of such a special day. Calm seas and a fair wind J, you will be missed.

Drawn a #heron. Added some ink In some lights it’s just a negative space, heron shaped. In others it’s a heron bold against the water. #commisionsopen #BuyArtFromArtists

Ive been musing Mind you, the boxes may be soon redundant and we will just be left with the maps… which is not ideal either (to put it mildly!) www.scribehound.com/countryside/...

@ecosystemengineer.bsky.social hi. Have you seen this ? I thought it was your kind of research/subject and may interest you. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Every year I stop myself from posting “now look here you lot, my books would make an excellent Christmas present” in October because it’s way too early, and then I forget until it’s way too late. Hope I’ve hit the sweet spot this time. levparikian.com/index.php/sh...

Drew a peregrine For a commission It is judgy and slightly annoyed… Message me if you also want a bird drawing (or want to gift one to someone for Christmas…)

I wrote a thing about worry, moss, fertilisers, grazing livestock, carbon credits, agricultural intensification, government policy, regen and rewilding! Mostly though it’s about waxcap fungi. And deep worry. www.scribehound.com/countryside/...

A farmed landscape. A semi wild landscape. Home for cattle and sheep as well as a wealth of other things, from yellowhammers to lichens, from voles to fungi, from ravens to dor beetles. Food and the wild, in the same place, at the same time. #dartmoor

I do rather love autumn, especially on my patch of Dartmoor. - growing food and looking after the biodiversity at the same time in the same place - not only possible but vital and quite achievable with a bit of a mindset shift.

I think I am going to start calling this ‘Mr Icky and the chari-taint’ Like it’s some ludicrous kids book, rather than a whole swathe of environmental charities being deeply dystopian. Better for my bloody pressure anyway.

Drew a woodcock for a commission. Why yes, yes I am taking bird drawing commissions at the moment…

A question If a charity or group took money in the last two years from a vocal known anti-trans right wing Zionist should they be eyed with deep suspicion no matter who they are or how good the cause? Or is it just me that finds that disgusting and a sign to have nothing to do with them at all?

Beautiful And Doomed Loss in a landscape, Swift (3) - unfinished Roofing slate and gold Facing the idea of damage.

Break stuff And it stays broken.

Smash things up and they remain smashed No amount of offsetting damage can fully fix broken.

Seems a fitting day to repost this.

Old pasture grazed short in late summer and autumn for the win! #waxcap #dartmoor @nffn.bsky.social

God, #waxcaps are just fabulous aren’t they? And if their grasslands get damaged they are gone. Like ‘20 years for partial recovery but maybe no coming back’ gone Makes me both full of awe (that they still exist at all, let alone in number) and so bloody scared for their future

I’ve written a thing again This time about ‘nature’ Not the thing (whatever that is) but the word. I propose we stop using it and get a bit sharper with what we are trying to say… And yes, I know that’s unhinged. www.scribehound.com/countryside/...

Signs of recovery These babies are from one of our hardest worked fields. A field that may not have been intensified as fully as most but still was pumped up with fertilisers. Four years ago we had one species of waxcaps, (Snowy One of the toughest) return Then parrot and meadow And now… More!

Here. A small tirade against half-arsed language. In which I propose we all stop using the woolly and indistinct word #nature and see how that changes how we think about our world And yes, I know it’s not sensible, but… it’s maybe worth mulling over… www.scribehound.com/countryside/...

Time on #Dartmoor to be careful where you put your feet! Especially in short mossy grass. (Where the sheep graze in particular) The change in weather has finally awoken the #waxcaps!

If you believe what BrewDog did at Kinrara was bad, don't wait to see what is coming - take the time to understand what Oxygen Conservation stands for and protest parkswatchscotland.co.uk/2025/10/04/o...

Been away for a few days. Been looking at the sea. #sketchbook

Seriously how hard is it to say “This is an outrageous attack on our friends and neighbours who are in this country legally and have followed all the rules to get settled status, who are valued members of our communities, get to fuck frog-face”?

Sure signs of autumn on our place. If you farm livestock in a very low impact way you get all kinds of good stuff* All I need now is the waxcaps!! (Which are slow to show this year here) *you may need to wait a few decades for the results but it’s worth it!

Medics returning from Gaza say Israel deliberately targeting children with sniper, drone fire, Dutch newspaper reports.

In the least surprising news of the year… … I have questions about peat. If anyone here can answer them please do!!! www.scribehound.com/countryside/...

We have published our AI generated slop and stand by it and have explained why it might be nonsense in the documentation no one will read, now kindly fuck off.

Peat map The FINALE! My final letter (apparently) in a long line of letters about the terrible peat map… I’m drawing some pretty bleak conclusions about this I used to believe that ‘the truth’ mattered in science and that if evidence was presented conclusions could be adjusted, how foolish of me

Made with rubbish Graphite shavings and packing paper from a parcel The desire to use my hands to shape the wings of the birds swept over me as I tidied the table. I’d sharpened a graphite pencil, its shavings tipped onto the waste paper. They felt under my fingers unmanageable

You know that thing where something low level petty happens and it raises a whole host of red flags? Yeah That Fun* times in the world of carbon capture, big money and ecology… (*And when I say ‘fun’ I mean ‘playground petty with an unpleasant edge’.)

Yeah That’s a very nice sight The wood edged fields are worth their weight in gold in the summer, especially in a dry hot summer For all the talk about how bad livestock is this is pretty much perfect Land use layered Food and nature, in the same place at the same time, complementing each other

*Cough* @naturalengland.bsky.social the New England Peat Map… *cough*

This was eleven days ago. Has she found food? Is she still alive? Her face is haunting me. Gaza is facing a human made, hate filled genocide. It’s obscene. And yet people are floating plastic bottles into the Mediterranean Sea, filled with air, rice or lentils and hope they will find the hungry.

Peat map! The reply to the reply to the reply to the query about why the map is SO RUBBISH Apparently the map is good and also bad, fit for purpose yet also not, without robust surveys (by us? Unpaid?) my concerns will and also will not lead to the map being changed… Help me My Brain is melting!

This displaced and starving Palestinian woman sheltering at Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital says she hasn’t eaten in five days, as Israel continues its suffocating blockade on Gaza.

We are receiving desperate messages of starvation from #Gaza, including from our colleagues. Food prices have increased 40 fold. UNRWA has enough food for the entire population for over three months, stockpiled just outside Gaza. Lift the siege and let aid in safely and at scale.

Over Two whole months since the peat map launch (and exactly two months since @naturalengland.bsky.social suddenly decided a user disclaimer was needed on the landing page of the maps website in case anyone actually used it) and still its full of errors (yet apparently 95% correct!)

More gannets A larger painting, but the birds stay tiny.

Dusk. Dartmoor. Nightjars nest. Ink and pencil Another small work, finding a way to show the feeling of a place, a time, and a bird (or two) The way the light changes as the dark settles in. The churring rising from the half light and the impossibility of seeing some birds!

As someone who lives and works here and cares deeply about the place, I'm feeling increasingly uncomfortable with the way in which Dartmoor has become a convenient media trope for the parlous state of nature in UK National Parks, and the tone of the debate around issues affecting biodiversity here.

Instead they seemed to have picked peat soils to survey and then rolled that data out across other soil types regardless of whether it’s right or not. Bad science… but who cares when the map is pretty and confirms your biases huh?

Over Two whole months since the peat map launch (and exactly two months since @naturalengland.bsky.social suddenly decided a user disclaimer was needed on the landing page of the maps website in case anyone actually used it) and still its full of errors (yet apparently 95% correct!)