Poor education and low IQ

You won’t find anything vaguely decorative in Swindon - it was my nearest town when I was a kid.

sandmartin colony, right on the edge of pasture - holes mined into the red land on a sea-eroded soilface - similes of bats, fish, insects as they swarm, but nothing could be more hirundine than those movements in 3 dimensions, the cut of wing & aviator's visor, the zeeping calls, the purpose #birds

Ash dieback is having some odd disturbance effects in ancient woodland. The extra light under dying ash canopy is allowing these wild roses to go crazy, scrambling up the tree trunks to heights of 7 m, forming these funky columns.

There was a heron on the Water of Leith a few years ago who turned up every lunchtime to be fed sausage rolls by some old boy. It must have had a shocking impact on the heron’s life expectancy…

Upton Heath saved by successful fundraising campaign | Dorset Wildlife Trust Dorset Wildlife Trust is delighted to announce that we have secured the purchase of a vital parcel of land at the heart of Upton Heath.

Utterly fantastic news. With the invaluable help of supporters and members, the Dorset Wildlife Trust have secured Upton Heath! Priceless habitat saved by wonderful people....
www.dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk/news/upton-h...

This is fantastic news -
I would be happy to support a Crowdfunder to ensure the cretin goes.

No deal with that orange moron is worth the paper it is written on anyway.

Tonight Wednesday 15th April.

Cilla’s back 👏👏👏

Farage's visit to Scotland is one of the rare occasions when the most irritating living thing in the country isn't midges.

Snap

That bear would not even blink at Surströmming.

Had to look up Surströmming! I don’t think it would bat an eyelid!

AGAIN

The nest of a TreeGuardCreeper 😄

This is the most extraordinary photo - a polar bear dining on a dead sperm whale in amongst the ice floes.

Interesting to see the people behind the “napalming” of Stobohope Estate (Scottish Forestry’s words not mine) back in the news.

Further Reporting of Offences to Police Scotland - Land Matters The Register of Persons Holding a Controlled Interest in Land was established under Part 3 of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016 to provide greater transparency on who owns land. It requires partners...

BLOG - I have reported further offences to Police Scotland under the Register of Persons Holding a Controlled Interest in Land. andywightman.scot/2026/04/furt...

Morons.

Deer fences and access rights in the Cairngorms National Park (3) - Balavil update - parkswatchscotland On 19th March I wrote to both Scottish Forestry and the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) about  the locked gates (see here) in the deer fencing around the Balavil Estate’s Creag Bhalg woodlan...

After receiving £1,034,438 from Scottish Forestry for a woodland creation scheme, the Balavil Estate fails to meet its contractual obligation to provide for public access.
#ForestryPolicy🌲#PublicAccess🥾 #Cairngorms🏔️ #LateNeoliberalism

parkswatchscotland.co.uk/2026/04/09/d...

A view of Kielder: looking over the sitka spruces on the slope below towards the Kielder Reservoir, and the huge plantation forestry that surrounds it

looking down across a stream to the far side, which is thick with dead bracken. A low stone wall covered in moss pokes out on one side, and there's various trees dotted about. The right hand bank is a forest plantation.

A shallow, broad stream flows out of the trees and through yellow grass, but it's dyed the vegetation bright orange with iron washed out from coal workings below

as it's 100 years since the first planting at Kielder, I went for a look at some non-tree history around Plashetts.. including finding the entrance to a drift mine, and iron-rich water flowing out of an old air shaft
sarahdal.github.io/northumberla...

#Northumberland #Hiking

Watching that Attenborough Secret Garden programme and wondering what percentage of folk get Beaver 🦫 visiting their garden

We are up the hill from the River Tay across a road - it really likes our early sprouting Ground Elder in April

It’s hard to believe, but JD Vance has somehow found a way to be even more incompetent than Trump.

Ah - the glory days of David Frost (not the good one doing interviews, but the shit one leading negotiations). Happy, simpler times….

I’d forgotten that from Twitter
- even better news that is on here too. Thank you!

One of my cartoons in Monday's Metro

Probably the biggest Gunnera I have ever seen, next to a picturesque bridge, a little north east of Bodmin. I took this photo in summer, 2023, when I was living in Cornwall and researching the Cornish section of Everything Will Swallow You.

This massive Gunnera is totally failing in its attempts to be inconspicuous while trying to sneakily move this old Cornish bridge to a new location.

A few new species from Penicuik area today: Birch Woodwort, Spanish Gorse (presumably a garden escape), Tasgius morsitans - a rove beetle that seems to have very few records in Scotland and a common bog moss with cow horns Sphagnum auriculatum #panspecieslisting numbers 2279-2282