Many things waking up in the neighborhood today.

Distractions while finally catching up with some winter pruning in the garden.

For local folk I'll be talking @carabidaeuk.bsky.social at Kintbury Wildlife Group tomorrow, 7:30pm 🪲https://kintburywildlife.co.uk/Current-programme.html. If I'm organised enough might have some specimens to look at...possibly live ones too!

Final January total for birds seen on foot from home stands at 69, Buzzard finally showed up yesterday (three at once). Strong start to the month was followed by endless rain and the fact my workplace is not realistically close enough to walk to! #footit @footit.bsky.social

Spot the birder who can't read or thinks their views or photographs outweigh bird welfare

Wonderful afternoon with @unirdgento.bsky.social students, @chrisfoster.bsky.social & @wetconservatrix.bsky.social from @uniofreading.bsky.social The @nhm-london.bsky.social has joined forces with the teaching & the @royentsoc.bsky.social are providing financial support (👋@simon2ward.bsky.social )

Specially for @kitenet.bsky.social here at last is a picture of me with ground beetle! More to come later to see which you like best 😆

Happy Burns Night! With thanks for Scotland and her fine culture, food and drink. Not my home country but I feel at home whenever we go 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🥃

A slow @rspb.bsky.social garden birdwatch. 3 Feral Pigeon (strictly speaking these were on the roof, not in the garden), 3 Long-tailed Tit, 1 Woodpigeon. Benny the cat may have seen something we missed but he'll never tell....

Poor urban foxes, always being vilified by the press

On the major plus side, here's our local Starling roost. They may only count once for #footit but I feel mega abundance should get bonus points....Great White Egret flying through and a very overdue first Grey Heron of the year make it 54 species on foot since January 1st.

My favourite scrubby accidental 'wilding' field for spring warblers in the middle of Newbury has fallen victim to a 'conservation' project. I will enquire about the intended replacement but I can't imagine it being an improvement on what was a nice mosaic of scrub, small trees and tall grassland.

Cetti's Warbler, Little Egret roosting and a flyover pair of Goosanders (another fine patch tick) make 52 species for #footit @footit.bsky.social

Another delightfully wintry day. Somebody forgot to order a white Christmas so we got a white Epiphany instead! Went out for just 15 minutes and 4 Snipe dropped into the (very ordinary) field nearest our house for #footit 49. Meanwhile the cat continues to enjoy walking across the garden pond 🙃

I can confirm my face is both smug and self-righteous 😂

A distractingly beautiful morning meant I couldn't resist a much longer walk from home than planned. Siskins *everywhere* glowing in the low sun. Lapwing and Golden Plover flocks going over bring #footit total to 47 species.

Abundant Hawthorn and abundant Redwings on a 2 hour tramp from home at lunchtime. Otherwise slow going, 36 species but Redpoll and Stonechat were nice patch ticks. #footit @footit.bsky.social

On the first day of Christmas (in about 2014), @duckswabber.bsky.social gave to me - a partridge in a pear tree. Happy Christmas everyone!

PhD opportunity using long-term data & experimental results to develop a model to predict ground beetle species responses under woodland management scenarios. With @uniofreading.bsky.social ding.bsky.social, @forestresearchuk.bsky.social & @ukceh.bsky.social blogs.reading.ac.uk/crocus-dla/c...

If only we could bottle the optimism of rail apps that always assume late running trains will magically make up time rather than losing more by being out of position 🚂🕐

What fresh HR hell is this?

Excited to have a ground beetle project @carabidaeuk.bsky.social open for applications in @crocus-dla.bsky.social. Nice mix of analysing long-term data, fieldwork and time at @forestresearchuk.bsky.social, assessing trends in woodland carabids. Please share! blogs.reading.ac.uk/crocus-dla/c...

If you're a National Trust member, it's that time of year again: Midnight tonight is the deadline. It's a shame people have to keep doing this to keep a toehold on historical truth in this country, but here we are. Voting link: www.nationaltrust.org.uk/who-we-are/a...

Splashes of October colour on Greenham Common this morning while a Woodlark sang (listen below! 👇)

Redwings!

Ah, happy memory of a formative and necessary experience as a politician at any level - being slightly misquoted out of context by the press 😆

I'm delighted to announce that I am....not the new Archbishop of Canterbury, despite 'rich hat priest follows mitre' being an anagram of my full name.

ACE Space Newbury‬ ‪@acespacenewbury.bsky.social‬ · 8m A busy October for #livemusic at ACE Space, Newbury Fri 3 Oct - Unplugged Open Mic Sat 4 Oct - Annie Keating Band Sat 18 Oct - Mark Harrison Band acespace.org.uk/events/

Great Green Bush Cricket from a park in Potsdam earlier this month. Strikingly yellow legs on this individual

Exciting news that the Kennet Valley Wetland Reserve has finally been given the go-ahead. The ancient, but innovative, rural town of #Hungerford & its unique Town & Manor (that upholds commoners rights, keeps commons & open spaces for all) will be creating a new wildlife & community reserve 1/2

Turns out, German trains are indeed actually worse than ours which is pretty impressive. At least we usually get announcements on the train.

What's the earliest we should be worried about a general election happening, and what slightly more sensible (if any are left by then) other countries might take in political refugees?

Kevin and the rest of us are looking forward to welcoming you!

I really like this paper, which models patterns and drivers of occupancy change across GB for 1252 insect species. Especially like Fig 5 which shows the most important negative and positive drivers for each grid square #conservationscience 🌍 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Looking forward to seeing everyone at Ento25 this coming week @royentsoc.bsky.social. This memory popped up today, entomophagy at Ento15 in Dublin! As I recall the ants were quite piquant.

Imagine how miserable you'd have to be to spend your day getting angry about improving road safety, or finding it funny (and it goes without saying, never read comments on Facebook!)

📢 Deadline extended! We're offering an extra week to join the entomological community at #Ento25 in #Glasgow. Make the most of your trip and explore this vibrant city around the conference & discover the #ScottishHighlands. Deadline: 25 Aug 🔽 buff.ly/FiCiHj8 @unistrathclyde.bsky.social

I have no idea who or what Clean Bandit are, but the BirdNet classifier as run on the Chirpity software is 98% certain they are a Tawny Owl.

OK and permit us one none insect, because Bristly Millipedes are awesome!

And a handful more why not...

Insects from our 2nd year field course at Slapton Ley last week. Always a rewarding place to spend some time entomologising! IDs in alt text.

Near the end of our undergraduate biodiversity fieldcourse in Devon. Lots of species and much fun had #universityofreading

RSPB species ID needs some work

There in lies the difficulty in assessing populations from observations, good thing we have long-term monitoring programs, real need to develop more for other taxa.

On this day in 2018, at least 50 Swifts over our garden, probably 70+. Happy if I see more than 20 now. Rapidly shifting baselines, though that was on the sort of thundery day where non-local birds pass through following ascending insects.

Another summer of heat and drought anxiety and I'm extra glad of having planted plenty of shady hedge plants and fruit trees when we moved in 2022. They struggled that first summer but now help keep our garden cooler, greener and relatively insect rich. Pond rapidly evaporating is a worry though.

Based on my spring and summer so far I'm thinking about pitching a book in which I go on gentle days out looking for rare beetles, find none of them and learn nothing about myself whatsoever. It would at least be unflinchingly honest #naturewriting

I'm getting texts from LNER about a delayed train I didn't actually end up catching. Niche reference but it feels like the scene in Terry Pratchett's Jingo when the dis-organiser is stuck reporting from the wrong reality (bingly bingly beep!)

I have news! I have a beautiful new website, built, designed & hosted in a sustainable way, by lovely Nick @handpressed.net! Highly recommended, Nick's been truly great to work with, intuitive & supportive. Gorgeous illustrations by Lynn Hatzius & a new blog, An Ecology of Love & Ruin, from me too!

Proud to have played a small role in making this happen. Fantastic broad range of contributors. Now to reflect, including on who else needs to be in the room next time