A hot Bank Holiday. A day when the locals find a quiet, shady nook to escape the record-busting heatwave and the visiting hordes who fill the river hotspots with noise and the smells of barbecues and hot sunscreen. Halcyon days.

View from Auchengibbert hill

Swifts over the moon, part 2. Another attempt. Conclusion: I cannot get an in focus moon AND swift in one shot. I thought perhaps stopping down might just do it... no. Here's a fuzzy swift flying between me and the moon.

Just spent a happy 40 min trying to photograph swifts crossing the moon. Futile. Here's the moon. They are still out there, crossing it.

House martins have investigated the gable of the house opposite for several years but this is the first time they have done so early enough to build nests there. A couple of fuzzy photos taken today, better ones to come I hope. #birds #nesting #nature

Symmetry and order - fern fronds (soft shield fern?) in a shady corner of the garden.

Symmetry and order - fern fronds (soft shield fern?) in a shady corner of the garden.

One of the really wonderful things about making art and sending it out into the world is the way it can become part of other stories. Honoured and touched to be given a small part in this tale.

Five years ago to the hour. For the first time in years we will miss the May light in the NW of Scotland.

At various stages of wood engraving and printing the wood block can be more striking and engaging than the prints it is used to make. A 120x60mm block of lemonwood - Ben Lomond (reversed).

A day to go down to the river and watch the dippers.

Oscar Droege - Lakeside Scenery in Hamburg #ShinHanga #Woodblock #Print #Ukiyo-e

First attempt at printing a wood engraving with two colours grading into each other on the block, using two rollers, wet on wet. Far from perfect execution, but effective nevertheless. Dunstanburgh Castle, 100x100mm.

Evening walk along the River Wharfe. Blackcaps singing everywhere. Cloud rolling in from north, looks like more rain.

Another watercolour island from the 'air', sketched from a LiDAR reconstruction: Hirta and Soay, St Kilda.

Just resurfaced. A short walk around some of Ilkley Moor's Bronze Age carved stones and other monuments. Map, GPS track, description and photos. Plus extra photos: 12 Apostles Circle, Badger Stone, Pepperpot and Barmishaw Stone. www.outdooractive.com/en/route/hik...

A frog that knows what it's about. Out of the veg plot on a direct line to the pond.

Just replaced my rusty old website with a shiny new one. Not a task I relished but a welcome distraction from the state of things. www.johnaltringham.co.uk #art #WoodEngraving #prints #mountains #landscape #nature #Scotland #Yorkshire #Northumberland

Pre-breakfast walk on the riverbank. Watching life watching me.

A walk across the broad top of Ilkley Moor this morning, under a hot sun. Green hairstreak butterflies everywhere, in intense aerial combat.

Thursday 30 April, swifts over the house, the first in 2026 and a week earlier than usual.

An infinite number of willow warblers on the edge of Ilkley Moor this morning, their singing a calming wall of sound, interrupted by the calls of a solitary cuckoo, newly arrived to parasitise them and the meadow pipits higher on the moor.

Spring brood of Holly Blue butterflies in the garden. Only 3cm wingspan but hard to miss. Note long striped antennae and long, slender feeding tube. An oak seedling has emerged in a pot by the front door. No nearby oak trees is some distance away - work of a local jay?

An afternoon walk in the woods on #EarthDay, bluebells and greater stitchwort at their best, a tawny owl hooting.

#WorldCurlewDay, a day when the curlew stands for all species caught in the climate and biodiversity crisis. I will take a walk on the moor after lunch and be grateful for their presence.

Just before I took the photos, this coal tit was working round the stonework of our dining room window, searching for tasty spiders and webs for nest-building.

Rievaulx Abbey, N. Yorkshire, England. A print from a 10x10 cm engraving on lemonwood. #WoodEngraving #art #printmaking #history #architecture

Glorious morning on Ilkley Moor. Highlight of walk was a flock of at least 734 wheeling and piping Golden Plovers. The first wheatears of the year have arrived, stonechats are busy and the skylarks are singing. The photo of the plover flock was taken this morning, other photos are from other walks.

Kilpeck, Herefordshire. Early 12C. #AdoorableThursday

Warm light in a cold, winter sunset at Byland Abbey in N Yorkshire, England, January 2025. One of several mediaeval monastic ruins in the area built in the beautiful local sandstone/limestone. A year later, a wood engraving in progress, the first test print made this morning.

Mountains inspire awe, which is easy to feel but hard to express. The duet of engraving & poem "Sgùrr nan Gillean" by @johnaltringham.bsky.social & me tries to capture this emotion with minimal means. Last planned installment of our "Light and Time" series. Free at open.substack.com/pub/blots/p/...

A palimpsest of a wall... the sort of painting you start when there's another long, wet day ahead of you. Watercolour based on a photo taken by @thisismyglasgow.bsky.social

A giant knife blade of rock, Forcan Ridge in the Scottish Highlands cuts into the sky. The 3rd "Light and Time" duet (4 planned) pairs a splendid engraving by @johnaltringham.bsky.social & a poem by me on the mountain as part of a cycle that is shaping it. Free at open.substack.com/pub/blots/p/...

A spectacular geological formation on the Isle of Skye has inspired the second "Light and Time" duet of a wood engraving by @johnaltringham.bsky.social, and then a poem by me. Enjoy! Free at open.substack.com/pub/blots/p/...

The wood engravings of @johnaltringham.bsky.social speak to me, often in the form of a poem. So I was happy when John agreed on a project, in which we show his and my work side-by-side. Share our joy in creating & savouring nature-inspired art. Free at blots.substack.com/p/light-and-...

A rapid sketch in walnut ink of what the moor might have looked like the last time I was up there if it hadn't been enveloped in rain and cloud.

First proof print from the finished block. The columnar basalt cliffs of Rubha Hunish on the northern tip of Skye. 75x75mm wood engraving. To the right, the engraving in a lemonwood block, after printing.

About to start on the final edits to the Rubha Hunish wood engraving, aiming for a proof print before day's end. In the meantime, to take your mind off the madness of the human world, here's Sgùrr nan Gillean in the Cuillin of Skye, in a winter snowstorm. In watercolour and wood engraving.

Wood engraving print, 75x75mm. The Ring of Brodgar, Orkney. #StandingStoneSunday #printmaking #art #prehistory

Ben Alder, central highlands, Scotland. Sketch in walnut ink and a wood engraving print based on the sketch. Working on these engravings of Scotland's mountains is a constant reminder of how many I will never see again... and that in many cases that's just fine! Give me my gnarly old favourites.

The nearest engraving I have made appropriate to a winter holiday greeting card: Schiehallion in the central Scottish Highlands. Have a good one!

Work in progress, my first wood engraving for several months. Enjoying the calm it brings. 10x10 cm lemonwood. Looking back up the cliff path at Rubha Hunish, Trotternish, Skye. Down to the almost hidden peninsula and the birds, the Shiants, the Outers and the panoramic mainland mountains.

Work in progress, my first wood engraving for several months. Enjoying the calm it brings. 10x10 cm lemonwood. Looking back up the cliff path at Rubha Hunish, Trotternish, Skye. Down to the almost hidden peninsula and the birds, the Shiants, the Outers and the panoramic mainland mountains.

Some of my wood engraving prints on their way this week to N. America, mainland Europe, Scotland, England and here in Ilkley.

A late afternoon walk along the River Wharfe from home. By design or benign neglect some parts of the flood plain are returning to nature, in tune with the trend on the river itself, where fallen trees are not tidied away but left to increase habitat diversity on the banks and in the water.

A visit to family in Hartlepool on the NE coast of England. Despite recent hard times its long, rich history shines through if you look for it. And there are beaches, sand dunes, rocky shores, estuaries, dene woodlands where the wildlife still clings on and even thrives...

Wherever we walk, goldcrests.