So many Marasmius hudsonii in the woods. #FungiFriends #MushroomMonday

Her sister wrote my favorite essay about her. She points out that RF would have been famous even if she'd never looked at DNA www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

"What Ukraine’s campaign has exposed about Russia is really a deeper vulnerability: an energy superpower whose strength lies in infrastructure built decades ago, maintained through improvisation, and preserved by command rather than innovation." www.foreignaffairs.com/russia/slow-...

Natuur - jagers 1-0

Always fascinating to see new @btobirds.bsky.social Ringing & Nest Recording report. Willow Tits at new low, no nestlings ringed at all, just 6 nests monitored. Ringed Marsh Tit halved from 2010. No Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers ringed in UK for 2nd yr running. www.bto.org/get-involved... #ornithology

Conducting interviews by email has drawbacks

Fantastic news www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

In the 1840s the Galson estate on Lewis was cleared for sheep. Most people were put onto emigration ships to Canada. Finally in 2007 - a community buyout. This commemorative sculpture by Will Maclean & Marian Leven is shortlisted for Marsh Award. If it moves you pls vote. pssauk.org/2025-pssa-ma...

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New - my first piece for @science.org ! Absolutely crazy footage of rat behaviour in Germany. Rats filmed snatching bats from air for first time | Science | AAAS share.google/WAsAIQ8j0MKp...

Many lichen species are sensitive to nitrogen pollution, making them natural indicators of air quality. 📱LicheN is a new app enabling people to help monitor air quality using lichens. Data gathered will improve understanding of N pollution and its impacts on ecosystems. buff.ly/AmWAOQB 🧪 1/

Mycorrhizal fungi provide plants with nitrogen, but in exchange they take up to half the carbon plants pull from the atmosphere. In a new study, researchers investigate how the environment influences this give-and-take. 🧪🌱🍄 eos.org/research-spo...

So pleasing. 🪶

A 2nd bill?? "With rumours of a second planning bill also on the horizon, we will continue to do everything in our power to galvanise our supporters and to stop the environmentally, economically and politically disastrous assault on the wild spaces we all cherish" www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Mushroom with scaly cap (possibly Amanita rubescens, the blusher) in Epping Forest.

Exasperated. Gutted. Furious. Terrified. Sometimes swear words are the only ones that fit. Our delightful government - who we put our trust in - is u-turning on THE easiest Nature action *ever*. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Pretty glad I headed back up to the woods for sunset... These are porcelain mushrooms, and a moveable log, so was able to get a photo from underneath! #Hockeridge #Mushrooms #Fungi

My wife Alison had these five Merveille du Jour moths in her moth trap this morning, here in SE Scotland.

Daubenton's bats are now entering hibernation a month earlier than 13 years ago without increasing fat reserves, highlighting shifting survival challenges linked to climate change. doi.org/g955mn

Triple terror. In the Chernihiv region, a russian drone targeted a service car of engineers who came to repair an energy facility after russia's previous attack — killing two workers and injuring three. When rescuers arrived, russians shelled them too. Unspeakable horror. Don't look away.

Bats just get cooler every day and another great example of the diversity of their diet (even in species that used to be considered insectivores!) www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

If you pick up the Guardian Weekend Magazine today, please read about my daughter Milly’s battle with Lyme disease. And if you’re feeling bold, drop your copy into your local GP. There are thousands of Millys out there. Most are currently not helped at all by the NHS or, worse, not believed.

Kudos to Bloomberg and @blkahn.bsky.social for not beating around the bush with this headline. www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

This is just to say I have eaten the swans that were in the duck pond and which you were probably saving for the King Forgive me they were delicious so white and so necky

Presenting 'Damian' the Death's-head Hawkmoth, A. atropos, newly emerged this morning, after being lovingly tended and raised by our Assistant Warden, Johnny Bull, after the caterpillar was found on the SBBOT Middle Field reserve on 14th August. Marvelous Moth Metamorphosis 🤩 #TeamMoth #KentNature

"10 years after the Paris Agreement, governments plan to produce more than double the volume of fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5°C" Stark "production gap" report from @unep.org today www.sei.org/publications...

A fight going on in the rice fields of the Tagus Estuary near Lisbon. Azolla filiculoides and Lemna gibba fighting it out for supremacy. The Azolla fronds arching upwards to cover the Lemna, and the Lemna becoming as gibbous as possible to prevent this. They are seemingly resorting to fisticuffs.

Really smart, thought-provoking piece by @gideonrachman.bsky.social in @financialtimes.com, featuring this emphatic conclusion: "The brutality of Netanyahu’s tactics cannot even be justified [...]. For me, at least, Ukraine and Israel are now on different sides of the moral ledger."

A resurrected Ice age #pond in Norfolk, E. England. Dug to draw in extraterrestrials. It took 1 day to bring back. The black soil is full of seeds. The excavation will fill over winter & be amazing by summer. Photo @hburningham.bsky.social @hayleymcmechan.bsky.social @timholtwilson.bsky.social

🦇 Why don’t bats get cancer? Despite their tiny size, many bats live 30+ years—and rarely develop cancer. New research looks at how their unique genetics, telomeres, and immune systems could reshape human aging and cancer treatment. 👉 Read the full story: MerlinTuttle.org/blog

#BREAKINGNEWS 🦇🌍 The world now has 1,500 recognized bat species! 🎉 The global list at www.batnames.org just hit this milestone. New bats are found through fieldwork in remote places & genetic discoveries. Amazing biodiversity news! #Bats #Biodiversity #BatsNeedFriends

“Rich Grenyer, a biologist at the University of Oxford, said de-extinction is a “dangerous” distraction and that gene-edited animals are “at best a sort of simulation, rather like those unnerving animated AI portraits of dead relatives some… people create”.” www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

Who had the idea to build the expensive HS2 bat tunnel? Answer: HS2 Ltd. Who approved it? Parliament. Was it necessary to route the track through species-rich ancient woodland? No, as a strategic environmental assessment would have shown, had one been done. www.bats.org.uk/news/2025/04...

This is infuriating. What is the point of a Marine Protected Area if trawlers are allowed to keep ploughing it? Yet again, the government has succumbed to commercial lobbying. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

“Following the cold war, western governments popularised the notion of a “peace dividend” from reduced defence spending. Now the British government refers to a “defence dividend” as it aims to use defence spending to generate economic growth.”

“When the researchers peered inside colonies of the Iberian harvester ant, they found two types of ant that looked very different” www.nature.com/articles/d41...

What the... !!!

Great to find Jersey Ladybird (Calvia decemguttata) in the New Forest today with @andrew-jewels.bsky.social

“On Wednesday, as helicopters were still dousing the flames of the 9,000-acre Bear Gulch fire, federal officials drove up in SUVs, checked IDs, then escorted 44 of those firefighters off the premises, arresting two of them” www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

Wow. Check this out. Politicians actually trying to solve problems can achieve a lot! www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solu...

Congrats to Sussex resident Kutub Uddin for being Highly Commended in the Natural Artistry category of the Natural History Museum's 61st Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition for Slime Family Portrait. Kutub spotted this slime mould in Slindon Wood.

“For a president obsessed with trade imbalances, more Americans spending money overseas, while fewer foreigners spend in America, should be troubling.” economist.com/graphic-deta...

There are “no links whatsoever between the offshore wind development activity and especially the humpback whale mortalities. None. Zero,” says Duke University marine scientist Douglas Nowacek. www.scientificamerican.com/article/whal...

🦇 “To test whether reflective turbine surfaces elicit attraction, we flew 242 Lasiurus cinereus and 154 Lasionycteris noctivagans through Y-maze assays. Bats were at least twice as likely to fly towards white turbine blade sections [than] black ones.” royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Canary-shouldered Thorn. What's not to like? West Dorset, UK. @dorsetmoths.bsky.social @dorsetbutterflies.bsky.social #teammoth

Tony Juniper (UCL conservation MSc graduate): “We know we can turn round species decline and improve ecosystems with the right targeted actions, the drive and the funding.” www.theguardian.com/environment/...

“Western diplomats & Russian analysts say that Putin thinks he is winning on the battlefield and that his original goal of replacing… Zelensky with a puppet regime in Kyiv might finally be within reach now that Washington has stopped paying for Ukrainian weapons.” www.wsj.com/world/russia...

A single male chick fledged from a nest in Dorset. The parents paired up in 2023 & this is their first successful breeding attempt "made more remarkable by the fact that the male adult bird has only one leg". www.birdsofpooleharbour.co.uk/first-wild-w...

The Pulsar XG35 thermal scope has been a game changer for surveying. Counting Noctules emerging from a tree roost is so simple compared to trying to see them in the gloom. 🦇 #bats

The size of this elephant hawk-moth caterpillar! And look at the patterning and colours, such beauts!