Very pleased with this result. A watercolour of a jay by Chris Rose that I bought unframed in an auction back in the summer.

Irish national parks remain an utter farce.

Is tyre pollution causing mass deaths in vulnerable salmon populations? www.theguardian.com/environment/...

My understanding of Mistle Thrush declines is that they are closely linked to arable landscapes - the species is now scarce in my old S Lincolnshire hants but remains widespread in the NW, even in C Manchester. Biocide impacts would be my first guess... see differences between Wales & Eng #UKBirding

Nazir Afzal is the former Chief Crown Prosecutor for North West England. He prosecuted the Rochdale grooming gang case amongst others. He knows what he’s talking about. #listentosurvivors #convicttheperpetrators #nobodysgirl

The strange subterranean harvestman Scotolemon doriae in Plymouth, Devon today

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... As usual, Marina Hyde cut through all the crap with her withering scalpel.

This is a tremendous book which i highly recommend. Gordon Buchanan takes the reader through a tough early life in Dumbarton and Mull before fate introduced him to legendary wildlife cameraman Nick Gordon. The rest as they say is history.

All I know is that with tech and AI being shoved down our throats with the message of conform or die, all I want to do is go out to the nature reserve, say hello to the birds, inverts and plants and take photographs, and spend the evenings crocheting. This urge is getting stronger by the day

A surprise find yesterday with our 1st Shieldbug of the year on the windowsill in the bathroom! - a Mottled Shieldbug (Rhaphigaster nebulosa). Put outside in a sheltered spot. @rockwolf74.bsky.social

This has been confirmed by DNA analysis as being Cortinarius lividomalvaceus. With oak on a road verge in Oxon. Maybe new to Britain...Hoping to get the verge a County Road Verge Nature Reserve, the first for fungi in county! many other nice woodland fungi here as well #fungifriends

This is amazing news Hannah. I very much doubt that this would have happened without your advocacy and doggedness. 👏👏👏🎉🎉🎉 Thank you!

Well today is a HUGE DAY for swifts in Scotland. I’ve travelled with my swift brick to witness Scottish Parliament in action & to thank ⁦‪@markruskell‬⁩ in person for his leadership. This evening swift bricks will be put to a vote. Will they pass into law? Watch this space!!

Whooper Swan. Coloured pencils on paper

Reform picks anti-migrant activist Matt Goodwin as its candidate for the Gorton and Denton by-election. A reminder that just a few months ago the BBC invited him onto Question Time as a supposedly independent "author and academic"

Happy 6th "Large boulder the size of a small boulder" anniversary to those who celebrate! #Geology ⚒️

Every January, the people of Weycroft sacrifice a Range Rover Sport to the river gods in the hope of avoiding further flooding throughout the year.

Well worth a watch if you have 15 minutes. A beautiful short film by RSPB surveying Leach’s storm-petrels on North Rona and the Shiants. Bit.ly/AWildJourney

Rustyback (Asplenium ceterach) from today's jaunt. An uncommon little fern in Northumberland. #ferns

The glorious, remote Nant Pasgan Fawr farmhouse in the hills above Talsarnau, Eryri/Snowdonia, approached by a slate slab bridge across a stream The house has been dated by dendrochronology to the late C16th 😮 👉 coflein.gov.uk/en/site/405144 📷 My own, yesterday

So basically Reform UK is now Rishi Sunak's Cabinet, just led by Nigel Farage.

Despite my general loathing of all things running I have agreed to pal my old mate Steve on what he says will be his last 10K at the grand young age of 70. Running/hobbling from Carlisle to Gretna on 1st February with funds raised going to Cancer Research. tinyurl.com/mpepsv77

Annual Rocky Shore Bird Count along Berwickshire Coast between Dunglass and Pease Bay yesterday. Vile weather - heavy rain, strong easterly winds and slippery rocks made for a challenging day. Peregrine hunting feral pigeons was the highlight.

Anyone noticed any comment from Farage or Reform on Trump’s latest comments on our input to NATO wars?

Climate crisis - what climate crisis? WHO in their right mind would want to go to the US at the moment anyway?

A leafhopper which I caught in a moth trap in the garden at the beginning of November 2025 has been confirmed as Acericerus haydenii - a non-native species which only arrived in Britain in 2010. Probably first record for Peeblesshire but it has now reached as far North as Edinburgh.

Day2Day Ecologist Reality #3 Another otter survey on the River Teviot. Lots of fresh spraint indicating high activity and the find of the day - a laptop!

Such judgement

This is fantastic “Trump and his Quislings”

Would not mess with this chappy from Sheppey @sedgwickmuseum.bsky.social

Day2Day Ecologist Reality #2 Otter Survey of River Teviot, Hawick Scottish Borders. With temperatures of -4C at the start of the survey I was very glad of my Neoprene waders. Cold weather made fresh otter spraint very easy to find. None steaming but could not have been far off!

Amazingly, Zahawi only got round to deleting the below after the press conference announcing his defection to Reform.

Day2Day Ecologist Reality #1 - Preliminary Bat Roost Assessment of a derelict building for bats prior to redevelopment. This former restaurant had many dead olive trees and most bizarre of all a walk-in fridge containing a box of 5 year old chocolate bars. At least it was not a corpse.

“If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer… And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind…And with such a people you can then do what you please.” Hannah Arendt

Muntjac 1 Indian Rhino 0

If a Pakistani Muslim owned X, distributed indecent images of girls on a platform where govt do their PR, where some receive payments for posts, they would have distanced themselves by now. X would be shutdown and Braverman and Farage would be calling for a ban and investigation into Pakistani men.

This is interesting because when I went for my first Covid vaccination, Farage arrived and pushed straight to the front of the queue.

Nigel Farage has just said Reform will vote AGAINST lifting the 2 child cap, despite promising to lift it in May. Reform doesn’t care about working class kids - or their families.

The Palestine hunger strikers have been on hunger strike for over 60 days and are close to death. They have not even been convicted of a crime - they are being held on remand (pre-trial) for more than twice the max time allowed, and counting…🧵

There are now 34 school contemporaries of Nigel Farage who describe alleged racist and antisemitic actions by him. If this was connected to alleged historic criminality, you'd have to think it would be enough evidence to try for a prosecution. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” —George Orwell (1984)

I call on my party and my government to remove themselves entirely from X and communicate with the public where they actually participate online and can be protected from such illegality.

I have not personally used X/Twitter for some time now. It was already an unpleasant place prior to its takeover by Elon Musk but since his acceptance of hate speech and anonymous online abusers, it has become utterly unusable.

This is a tremendous read. In the past month there have been 3 bird flu outbreaks at egg farms within 15 miles of Peebles. Do the operatives charged with slaughtering thousands of birds get tested for bird flu after? Fast Food Nation | Eric Schlosser www.theguardian.com/news/2026/ja...

Coldest night of the winter last night: -8C in Peebles. Glorious walk around the back of Eddleston this afternoon.

Took the Pegasaurus up the top of the Manor Valley this afternoon. Not much about - couple of kestrels hunting under an ominous sky were the highlights. Memorial to John Veitch who fought strongly to prevent the Manor Valley becoming another Edinburgh water supply reservoir.

Don't hold your breath over ScotGov commitment to research anything. They've supposedly researched Ravens in Orkney after calls for a cull, but no one has ever asked me as county bird recorder for any data. Where else do you suppose they'll do their 'research'? From the farmers calling for the cull?

Marks & Spencer spotlights an Angus sprout grower, showing how nature-friendly seed planting boosts biodiversity and crop quality this Christmas.

Nothing to see here. 2025 was just the warmest year in England for 366 years of records, but actually much much longer than that. And this happened during a La Nina event, which normally brings cooler temperatures to Northern Europe.

Jeremy Clarkson complains about no village Doctor, no village shops, no village schools, no bobby. This is the same Jeremy Clarkson who loves Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron who made all these things happen with their cuts. They love complaining about what they voted for.