Had a fantastic orchid tour in Kent today, led by @dunnjons.bsky.social and @thenewgalaxy.bsky.social of @mariposanature.bsky.social. Visited beautiful sites with gorgeous orchid species and saw my first Adonis Blue butterfly. A great experience – thanks, Jon and Richard!

Scrambled Eggs Lichen (Gyalolechia fulgens) in some abundance at Stackpole Warren this weekend. Classed as Endangered in Britain and present in just a couple of sites in Wales. @britishlichensociety.org.uk

The Archaeology of Woodland Landscapes: Issues for Managers Based on the Case-Study of Sheffield, England and Four Thousand Years of Human Impact By PAUL ARDRON 2006, Arboricultural Journal Publisher: Informa UK Limited doi.org/10.1080/0307... @botanicalmartin.bsky.social @wonkyeggs.bsky.social

Hoverfly larvae on a grass stem outside a pub in Wales. At this scale they always look rather... alien. Fear not, these are UK natives and friends, eating pests in your garden 🌿 #entomology #bugsky #diptera

Reposting for the Sunday morning reading crowd with a free-to-read link that isn't behind the Nature paywall! 🔭⚛️🧪👩‍🔬 📖: rdcu.be/floXQ

Large Red Damselflies along the River Wandle in Beddington Park. Female on left, male on right. ❤️

Stinking Iris, Iris foetidissima, on Mitcham Common. Very yellowy flowers, so tending towards var. citrina I think.

And another one. “These are unprecedentedly strong responses in patients whose disease has become resistant to both chemotherapy and immunotherapy.”

Beautiful Demoiselles along the River Wandle in Beddington Park. Female on left, male on right. Such gorgeous insects. 💚💙

In Universal Joy, queer lives matter. Trans lives are precious and beloved. And fascists go fuck. Yours St Belladonna #pridewideopen.

This Week on Photos 11th – 24th May (20, 21) Week 20 - 11th-17th May Bluebell Ffridd - Lousewort Upper Gam - Bird Cherry - Malvern View - Brassica 1. Bluebell Ffridd, Upper Gam, Powys. 11.05.26. Interesting to see this ancient hillside, covered in bluebells still in their prime, weeks after those…

Red Campion Anther Smut, Microbotryum silenes-dioicae. On the anthers of Red Campion, Silene dioica. Brundall, Norfolk, today. #Fungi #FungiFriends

Fresher than a daisy! From today's @suffolk-nats1929.bsky.social visit to Creeting St Mary #Suffolk here's the required photo of a Painted Lady #butterfly, this one on Ox-eye Daisies. Other butterflies on other plans were also available. @bc-suffolk.bsky.social

Any idea what's causing the pink tinge on this Guelder rose flower? @bitheolaidhe.bsky.social

Golden-bloomed Grey Longhorn, Agapanthia villosoviridescens. In good numbers at Strumpshaw Fen RSPB Reserve, Norfolk, today. www.naturespot.org/species/gold... #Beetles #UKWildlife

Drinker moth, Euthrix potatoria. Caterpillar feeding on Common Reed. Strumpshaw Fen RSPB Reserve, today. butterfly-conservation.org/moths/drinker #Moths #TeamMoth #¨˚Wildlife

youtu.be/WWpybBvdOXE?... @lacharpenta.bsky.social @justagalandadog.bsky.social @jennytpgrows.bsky.social

youtu.be/lHu1DgftBSE?... @justagalandadog.bsky.social @lacharpenta.bsky.social @jennytpgrows.bsky.social

A Mayfly looking amazing and clinging to the stem of some Himalayan Balsam. Today's wood had hectares of dense Himalayan Balsam (no fault of the owner) and difficult to know what to advise about it; impossible to control manually given the terrain & such a vast population.

Also today, two new colonies of the very rare form of Great Horsetail that has secondary branching. And yes, I know, but your flora is wrong and needs to be updated from "never with secondary branching" to "rarely with secondary branching".

Any ento bodd have any thoughts on this little fella? I'm guessing an early instar plant-hopper but would be grateful for any pointers! On Polypodium interjectum in #Denbighshire

It's important to me to show you beetles in the greatest level of detail I can manage. Silpha carinata, no common English name. #beetles #insects #coleoptera #naturephotography

Tree hugger bear.

Here's a National Science Foundation paper I worked on that will be impossible under the regime's proposed rules. We study evolution, which happens across the entire globe. We had collaborators in Argentina, in Australia, in Germany. We cannot do our kind of science in one country.

Have you, like me, spent the last 26 years worrying if the Canadian Potato Museum STILL has the display of various potato diseases with potatoes in little coffins? Stop worrying. I checked today. Still there.

Tech billionaires should not be able to tilt British democracy from Silicon Valley boardrooms. Here’s how we could legislate to stop social media platforms amplifying the Far Right for profit or political influence. 🧵

Would definitely recommend Waxcap hunting in the Autumn - the app is very easy to use and you do the ID by colour and get a point score for the site. Often found in village churchyards, so makes a nice local country mystery tour. Info on last years hunt 👀https://www.plantlife.org.uk/waxcapwatch/

Very pretty Bramble (or some sort of Rubus) in today's wood survey - lots of flowers open all over at the same time, so it stood out

A single variegated Ramsons leaf from a wood survey earlier in the week. Most of the Ramsons was dieing back and I had to walk through it and there was so much -so very much- and it is a) slippery on a steep slope, and b) a very persistent smell on your clothes if, for example, you happen to slip

If you'd like to support my writing & ongoing treatment, why not visit my little Etsy shop which has dozens of Shell County & Natural History posters for sale, Japanese prints, English etchings & rare books: prices from £10, with more items added every day! Offers welcome. etsy.com/shop/Sourisd...

Massive wren paper, on massive wrens.

Meet the Chocolate Tube Slime (Genus Stemonitis) — not a fungus, not a plant, not an animal ... it's doing it's own taxonomic thing. Go touch some bark this weekend!

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Yellow Flag, Iris pseudacorus. At its peak at Wheatfen (Ted Ellis Trust Reserve), Norfolk. Visited on yesterday's bike ride. #WildFlowerHour

A bit hard to see, as she is very well camouflaged, but here I think is a female Emperor dragonfly ovipositing in what I believe is Common Water-Crowfoot. I was enthralled watching this at Bidder's Pond on Mitcham Common yesterday.

For days, Bolivia has been in a state of full-on revolt. Broad social discontent has brought the country to a halt and stoked mass resistance to the larger project of U.S-aligned, right-wing attacks on workers and social movements in Latin America.

Shrewsbury folk, there's a far right march tomorrow starting in the Quarry at 11.00 & going to the Guildhall. I saw a couple of balaclava'd idiots putting up flags on the lampposts along St Chad's Terr. There's also a Stand Up to Racism rally in the Square, not sure of timing. Take care out there.

Tree Bumblebees don't just use 'old' bird nests, they will take over active bird nests and evict the adults, killing any eggs/young. Nestboxes artificially increase this competition, which is much rarer in cooler natural holes in trees. We did a paper in this: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Usually avoid full sun for a moth pic, but in this case... 😍 First Striped Hawk-moth for the Axminster garden, in all its glory. 😎 Hopefully a good number of moth folk will see one during the current influx. This little stunner certainly deserves the hype. VC3 #TeamMoth

You rarely see Duke of Burgundy taking nectar, but I have seen it quite often this hot spring. Here on Buttercup, but also on Daisy and Elder. I think they like the open flowers as they have a short proboscis ?

Did you know that thousands of energy-hungry AI data centres are coming to Europe? Electricity bills could go up fast unless Big Tech is forced to run them on 100% new, renewable energy. Join me in signing👇 action.wemove.eu/sign/2026-05...

Blimey, this pristine Striped Hawk-moth is not what I was expecting in the garden moth trap #Shrewsbury this morning🤩. Only c3rd county record by the look of it. Otherwise 1 Small Mottled Willow and 2 xylostella the only migrants in a rather thin catch. #teammoth ##ukwildlife

The amazing York Helmet is one of only six surviving helmets from Anglo-Saxon Britain, and the best preserved! A Latin inscription bears the name ‘OSHERE’. The nosepiece is decorated with fantastic beasts! Found in 1982 by a digger operator in York. AD 770-775. 📷 me #FindsFriday #Archaeology

Oh, Rachel, you horrible, horrible woman, what the fucking Hell do you think you're doing?? No, you *know* exactly what you're doing - punching down on the most disadvantaged yet *again*. Do you even have a conscience?

Many lady beetle adults and larvae like the one shown here (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) are well-known predators of crop pests, especially aphids (Hemiptera: Aphididae). Palmyra Michigan, 10 Sep 2013.

pants & shirt, breathable OK in summer rynoskin.com/collections/...

What we need is a heat map of tick infection levels, I now have clothing which prevents almost any tick attachment, wish I had back then, an at work PPE issue, meaningful information a Health and Safety at Work issue. Just saying ticks are vectors is inadequate when in some places

Italy seizing millions in Mafia‑linked assets.... ....is a blueprint for how to deal with the Trump infestation.

Waxcap records Plantlife have made five years of Waxcap Watch records available online. plantlife.hub.arcgis.com/datasets/Pla... @botanicalmartin.bsky.social @wonkyeggs.bsky.social @palustris.bsky.social