My binoculars are 50 today (they were my 18th birthday present). I'm spring cleaning my website markavery.info/book-reviews/ which has a new page to make it easier to browse my book reviews: see markavery.info/book-reviews/ I've added Categories/Tags to sidebar; there are 9000+ posts after all.

#BirdOfTheDay A Male Dartford Warbler taken at my local heath, perched on a gorse stem.

A predictor of lichen diversity in a churchyard is the presence of key features; Boundary wall Variety of tombs Exposed headstones Lignum; gates, benches Old church walls Old trees Low cover of shade Low cover of ivy Necton had several of these and thus had a high count of lichen species - 76.

Welcome to Super Seabird Sunday where we ask you to share photos, videos & artwork of seabirds to brighten timelines. Here is my contribution; a pair of magnificent European Shags at their nest on the Isle of May #SuperSeabirdSunday

Weirdly, I saw this exact bird in Hull the other week but couldn't get good enough pics to read the ring - glad someone else could!

Same going on in my garden (and Robin and Blackbird)

#SuperSeabirdSunday Puffins pre-breeding season rafting on the Northumberland coast. @steelyseabirder.bsky.social

Woodpecker and Hole - created from macro photographs of weathered urban surfaces #woodpecker #bird #birdart #wildlifeart #animalart #natureart #illustration #weatheredsurface #urbandecay

Mediterranean Gulls on the south coast today #ukwildlife

A non-spider arachnid call a harvester or daddy-longlegs (order Opiliones), Anza-Borrego Desert, California. These harmless arachnids have no fangs, venom, or silk and are mostly scavengers. Zoom in for a free bonus arachnid, a tiny orange mite attached to the harvester's body. 🐙🌿 #BugSky

Caution! - Stoat at work. Live from a North Dorset lane.... The Stoat escaped into the hedgerow - rabbit repositioned at the side of the road. Shame the van came - it's a very quiet lane... #Stoats

Good one in NYC.

Clarke's Mining Bee Andrena Clarkella, the only one seen at their nest aggregation. It was torpid in a freezing wind. Site near Newton Abbot. None seen on the willows. A kleptoparasitic Early Nomad Bee Nomada leucophthalma (Clarke's are their host bee) emerged from a Clarke's burrow.

Kenya's queen ants fuel booming global wildlife black market. Environmental consequences: ants are both keystone species and ecosystem engineers.... www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Another example of #BadNatureJournalism in this article where the author doesn't know how to correctly capitalise & italicise scientific names. If journalism about a subject I understand isn't up to scratch, what does that tell us about their other output? www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwywe3pgq1ro

Moths are definitely getting cool, now they can even help your brain function! Yet more reasons to start recording them @savebutterflies.bsky.social @richardfoxbc.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

"...it’s possible for us to actually preserve, and indeed enhance, our quality of life if what we do is look to the actual ways people get meaning and joy and purpose." I was on #BBC Radio 4's the Moral Maze talking about duty and sacrifice. www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmZv...

Encountered a pretty impressive postbox topper in Claygate today @artefactual.eurosky.social

Other work by the Ladybird artists. ‘March’ (Shell Guide, 1957) Artist: SR Badmin

Now that's what I call a striking invertebrate @ajcann.bsky.social

Whatever the copepods in last week’s sample were eating, I want some! Instant club wear! Photographed using UV light. #marineplankton 🦑

A large white and a small white, but not butterflies. Two flat whites, but not coffees. Nice capture!

Great Excitement! Well, not so much because of tiny invertebrate blindness - it's not a pretty butterfly but it is the first record for #VC55. Barkfly, Ectopsocus axillaris. #Insects #Psocoptera #Entomology

This is such a beautiful film - a must for butterfly lovers but everyone else as well. Screenings from April 19 - go and see it in a cinema! www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ma...

Went outside and spotted a Mountain #bluebird. The old expression of looking for a bluebird in your own backyard came to mind. My mother used to say it. #happiness

@docmartin2mc.bsky.social has sent me the DNA results of the Lesser Whitethroat wintering in my garden and confirmed it as S c curruca, not what I expected, but more unusual than the Eastern races. Many thanks to him and his staff for all their work. The bird is still present for its 88th day.

Right now hearing that beautiful aeolian song of the mistle thrush. A song cut straight from the wild.

"In some areas, First Past the Post could mean MPs getting elected on as little as 25% or 30% of the vote. That is not sustainable for British politics, and it is time for Proportional Representation." 💯💯💯 @richardfoordld.bsky.social

NEW POLL: Greens continue to surge. 🚀 Let's go! 💚🙌🏽 inews.co.uk/news/politic...

We're looking for a volunteer in Northern Ireland to help unlock permissions to allow more monitoring of National Plant Monitoring Scheme squares. Could you be a landowner-detective? Want to help the understanding of change in our flora? This could be the role for you.

Museum collections need to do a better job at communicating: 1) how to access collections 2) how we prioritize new collecting/acquisitions 3) just how to USE collections Things that we (in museums) think are obvious are often quite opaque and esoteric.

Well Yippee! My local water company is now "only" dumping shit into my local waterways *a thousand times a week*. And I'm still paying them a bloody fortune for doing it. Of all the disasters the Tories visited on us, selling off water services was one of the worst... www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

@norfolknats.bsky.social Lesser spotted woodpecker. The best views I have had of it at a time when it is clinging on in Norfolk by its claws.

Another Plymouth statue: 'The Leviathan'. Many people think it's a prawn but apparently "It has a cormorant’s feet, a plesiosaurus’s tail, the fin of a John Dory, a lobster’s claws and the head of an angler fish. So in actual fact, it is no-parts prawn." (share.google/TNGbpCVn0hPb...)

A Green-winged Teal stands tall amid the onset of spring. #birds #nature #wildlife #photography

Discover migration highlights from @birdtrack.bsky.social ➡️ bit.ly/3NFG7jL Over the next two weeks the Blackcap’s flutey song will become a feature of woodlands and scrub, whereas the similar-sounding Garden Warbler won’t start arriving until the second half of April. 📷 Blackcap by Liz Cutting/BTO

On a gloomy morning, it was a joy to see and hear my first couple of Willow Warblers at Kenfig Pool this morning. There were also a couple of others seen there today in a different area. I also had a Barn Swallow - my third in the past three days.

Swallow, House Martin & Sand Martin all on my patch today @dorsetbirdclub.bsky.social #ukbirding #birds #dorsetbirds

Goldcrest stand-off in progress.

Seeing a bit of Mandarin appreciation on here reminded me of this design I did a while back. #MandarinSegment #BirdArt

About as tame as they get, I had to back away from this male Mandarin at Pennington Flash who wasn't so much coming to bread as demanding artisan sourdough and a flat white. He was stoutly defending the honour of a female Mallard who outsized him by a good 20%. #ukbirding #birds

Tapped Opilio mollis, an attractive species of chequered beetle (Cleridae) out of ivy at Fishers Green today. #EssexWildlife #UKBeetles

Here is a Common Quaker moth found and photographed by my wife Alison here in East Lothian, Scotland, this morning. #TeamMoth

#RecordOfTheWeek today is this vibrant Green Tiger Beetle (Cicindela campestris) recorded by Martin Bell in Parc Penallta. Many thanks to Martin for the record and photo, submitted via the LERC Wales App www.sewbrec.org.uk/recording/app

I emitted a small F-bomb when I turned an egg tray over and saw this.. A NFG Dotted Chestnut, in my garden! 23 of 11 of the usual species and nfy Streamer, VC33 #teammoth

First sighting of the year on our local walks yesterday. With orange tips on the upperwing and marbled pattern on the underwing. It's a Male Orange tip butterfly nectaring on dead nettle flower head's.

On my walk in to work this morning in Norwich I noticed some knobbly galls on Forsythia. The exact causer isn’t known - various bacteria have been suggested, but not yet been shown to cause the gall (as far as I’m aware).

Chaenotheca ferruginea (I think) on oak. For those who love pin #lichen.

Only a few Yellow-legged Mining Bees Andrena flavipes seem to have survived the cliff collapse at Mansands. This slow motion slump took pretty well all of their nest burrows into the sea. A few survivors are trying to make the best of things on unpromising remaining cliff face.

Signs of Spring - my first sighting of a male Epistrophe eligans Spring Smoothtail hoverfly yesterday. Love its gold-tinted look. @bbowt.bsky.social @bbcspringwatch.bsky.social @dipteristsforum.bsky.social - Find out what other flies to look out for now in our NEW #BestFlyBook bit.ly/4dqQI8Z