Tiny busy wren Watercolour and pencil Will be for sale on my website later.

@johnwalterswildife.bsky.social @dartmoorac.bsky.social Steps apart from each other. Pretty pleased to find these guys on the farm!

Wednesday night A (sweaty) sound filled sauna for a thousand souls… Saw We lost the sea in Bristol Was very warm… And very good!!

Pasture, Dartmoor, grazed on a move often on rotation* (Not a hay field) Wildlife and food production in the same place at the same time. Work in progress, but we are getting there. (* as everything is a abbreviation now calling it MOoR grazing! )

Wrote about being tidy, and farming, and nature. www.scribehound.com/countryside/...

Wrote about being tidy, and farming, and nature. www.scribehound.com/countryside/...

Morning Here, a field that has been grazed twice already this year, in late March and late April. The cows will get another quick pass over it in about 12 days. Year on year its wildflowers have been increasing since we started the ‘keep them moving’ grazing regime.

My non academic brain just short circuited Why bother to cite a source if you haven’t read (and understood) it? Surely that’s the point of citing a source? Like isn’t it’s the whole point?! adding proof/weight to your ideas rather than just making shit up? Mind blown by ‘brain rot LLMs’ again!

Nightjar!!! Finally! I have a ink painting for sale if you want an absolute puzzle of a picture in which you know there are two birds but you can’t see them unless you really really know where to look!!

What are the odds that someone in a very safe seat is going to suddenly have some sort of ‘illness’ or ‘family crisis’ or other plausible excuse to step down, forcing a by election and ‘bish bash bosh Burnham’ happens? I’d think pretty high myself, but what do I know?!

Been trying to get my head around oil paints They are hard, using them almost makes my hands ache because I’m so used to pencil and needle as my main mediums It’s frustrating and that is made worse by knowing full well that it’s a practice game and a learnable skill! Still, I like this raven.

HELLO sorry didn’t mean to shout Anyway, this coming Thursday I’m having a chat with Melissa Harrison about her ridiculously good new book, The Given World. It’s at @booksellercrow.bsky.social in Crystal Palace and you also get a drink. Do come, and do tell people. www.outsavvy.com/event/34573/...

Today I did another bird walk around the farm, I saw, or heard: Cuckoo Magpie Jackdaw Crow Raven Buzzard Jay Blackbird Songthrush Mistlethrush House sparrow Robin Dunnock Wren Goldcrest Goldfinch Greenfinch Chaffinch Siskin Reed bunting Yellowhammer Skylark Meadow pipit And…⬇️

😬 Well I wasn’t expecting ‘right wing territorial pissing, but with fire’ as an online culture wars insult today… yet here we are! Just to be clear, I have used fire as a land management tool and I did not do it as some sort of mad bid to stick it to the ‘anorak wearers’ and show them what’s what!🤦‍♀️

Wrote about my sheep… Pulling apart some of the arguments about sheep on the uplands from my personal point of view. Enjoy. (Don’t go thinking I’m talking for a whole industry here, even if some of the points do range further afield than my place) www.scribehound.com/countryside/...

Cows in the wet woods for a day or two, then moved to a different pasture. This is not rewilding or conservation grazing, its livestock farming on rough land. It’s about working with the land and its natural stocking capacity and growing food for us. It works and it’s full of birds, bats and bugs

@smashfizzle.bsky.social Important message: First lambs today. That is all. Stay posted for more news as we get it (them!)

My neighbours The ones selling extra special carbon credits, that are worth so much more because (and I quote their ceo) “wealthy private and institutional investors would pay much higher prices to store carbon in new woodlands or peatland if they included high environmental and social benefit”

Israel has just passed a racist law introducing the death penalty to Palestinians. Demand the British government takes action & call for sanctions. It only takes 2 minutes to message your MP & Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper. Here’s a template: palestinecampaign.eaction.org.uk/opposedeathp...

EU expresses deep concern over Israeli approval of death penalty bill #palestine #pnn

A short and faintly farcical story about how bad data gets embedded into systems… First you make a map The map is not accurate (you didn’t test it properly) but because you have spent time and money on it you launch it saying it is fine… It’s so wrong that three days later you add a disclaimer…⬇️

Ffs The forestry commission map has the peat map of doom embedded in it, with no disclaimer saying ‘map is rubbish’ And this is how bad data becomes normalised The hours that will be wasted as people have to find out what’s actually peat and what’s not… Ta @naturalengland.bsky.social great job…🤦‍♀️

The blackthorn is out. I love the stuff, even if I am wary of it!

Mother’s Day. Bitter sweet. Not a mother, motherless, yet still pretty ok tbh. Just a layer of sad under it all that’s worth acknowledging.

The more I think about this the angrier I get. I hadn’t fully thought about the ‘needs an adviser so it must go’ bit… the simplification of every bloody thing, the walking away from the complicated. Surely the more something needs an adviser to make it work the more it needs to be paid for? Ffs

I’ve picked apart the mess of subsidies for species rich grasslands in England… It’s not a feel good story… In fact it’s a betrayal of careful old fashioned farming and biodiversity by the uk government. Makes me very sad tbh. www.scribehound.com/countryside/...

Birds seen or heard on my Dartmoor livestock farm today (NB: I went looking) House sparrows Chaffinch Wren Blackbird Robin Dunnock Siskin Greenfinch Yellowhammer Blue tit Great tit Coal tit Marsh tit Long tailed tit Redpoll Wood pigeon Stock dove Redwing Mistle thrush Song thrush Starling TBC…⬇️

Two small watercolours One with just 2 colours on a smooth karst stone paper One with 5 colours on nice watercolour paper. Both about the shape of oystercatchers. Which do you like best?

Tiny sketches. Working on the shape of oystercatchers in watercolour.

Good lord this is damaging. I’m not talking about farming, I’m talking about nature. This is insane stuff. defrafarming.blog.gov.uk/2026/02/24/s...

Went to Scotland Played with some oils Now need to spend some money on materials and learn the skill… because (unfortunately😑) it is a skill!!!

So, about @naturalengland.bsky.social’s peat map and its hallucinatory peat inventions… and about our government’s push to get ai into our official maps… (Side note: I’d definitely go see ‘hallucinatory peat inventions’ if they were a band, probably folk, probably playing a rural pub…)

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?