A small golden-brown moth on a fluorescent yellow background. The wings are spotted purple with fringe hairs and the head is hairy with long antennae pointing forwards

A small golden-brown moth on a fluorescent yellow background. The wings have darker spots with long shiny fringe hairs lying over the other wing. The head is hairy with large black eyes and long antennae.

Best moth of the weekend was this cracking Dyseriocrania subpurpurella that landed on my cycling jacket when I was out-and-about in #Northumberland. The gold wings glimmered in the Spring sunshine, but subtle purple spotting shows well in the photos.
The UV trap? 3/2 over 2 nights!
#TeamMoth

Phone shot of a mud flat at Cresswell Pond. Five of the seven male Ruff can be seen, one partially hidden by reeds, along with a Redshank, and in the background two Shelduck

Seven Ruff and a harassed-looking Reeve at Cresswell Pond this morning.
#NEbirding

This! 👇🏻

Maybe. And so my engagement with customers should not be a workflow. AI email drafts simply take more work to edit than to just write myself. I can see some value for colleagues for whom English is not a first language, but for me, I can write far more clearly -and personally- in “my own voice”

They say that #AI is supposed to make everyone’s life easier. But since Copilot AI support was introduced at work, I now spend 10-15 minutes a day closing “Do You Want to Write This With AI?” prompts. 🤷‍♂️

A Parsnip Moth, on a brick wall. A small, elongated moth with white head and grey-brown, streaked wings

Just the one moth to my UV trap in South East #Northumberland last night in the two hours it was out before the rain came. A NFY Parsnip Moth, which nearly got away but settled on the wall long enough to see and get a quick photo. #TeamMoth

City Legend ☕️

A Yellow-legged Gull from the Forum in Rome last weekend, for today’s #BirdOfTheDay, meeting both themes, #HeadShots and #Gulls. It landed about 2m away from us as we explored Palatine Hill.

Thought I’d somehow ended up on GBNews last night when the BBC 10 o’clock news came on. How for the national broadcaster has fallen when it’s lining up propaganda for Reform.

May I present to you this “Research Grade” Cat Ba Langur, my own personal iNaturalist highlight!

“Data analysts Opta still give Arsenal a 93.62% chance of winning the title, based on thousands of simulations of each team's remaining fixtures.” (BBC)

Really? As a Blue that’s been through it all, I have low expectations. But >90% likelihood in favour of Arsenal? From here? Them? And us?
#ManCity

🤞

Brilliant. @dalevince.com

Diamondback moth, a small, thin moth, creamy brown sides and pattern of diamonds

Indeed!

What a f*cking waste of lives and money. 😠

"This aged well…"
via Tony Martin

Wow! That’s genuinely a horrific vision of some people’s world view 😔

A world in which civility should reign at least within the public spaces of leadership, now looks on with disgust at America and its Government, and how far it has fallen beyond the gutter.

The dregs of humanity are running amok, stealing and committing open crimes.

Where does it end?

The last point is an important one. When (if?) we eventually look back on this through the lens of history, an awful lot of once respected news media and a large proportion of contemporary journalists are going to come out of it very badly.

Seriously? Imagine that is Salah not Cherki… not even 1 chance in 100 that it’s not given

Which it was. Needs to the entire stonehouse! (Umm… if that were a thing…)

5th March for me, three different locations in Morpeth, then the garden on the 7th. Usually 14th/15th for first record and 20th-ish for the garden.

Heard my first Chiffchaff in #Northumberland fully 10 days earlier than I’ve done before. Several moths have appeared a week before I’ve usually recorded them. Newts were in the pond 10-12 days earlier than the last 3 years.

One small tweet from a man, one giant cringe from mankind

14-spot Ladybird, a creamy-yellow ladybird with dark spots and markings

A pair of 7-spot Ladybirds, mating, on a green shrub

Another addition to my #LadybirdYearList today:

10. 14-spot Ladybird

knocked from Viburnum in my #Northumberland garden, somewhat earlier than previous years. Quite an abundance of 7-spot ladybirds the last few days, too - around 30 seen yesterday at a nearby Nature Reserve
#NELadybirdSpot

NATO is a defence alliance to ensure support if a member is attacked, not a gang who agree to join in if one idiot launches an illegal and unplanned attack on another country. Everyone knows this except the most powerful man in the world.

Early Thorn, a striking moth that poses like a butterfly, wings folded together vertically. The underside of the wings shows brown, pink and orange bands, a dark streak and faint crescents marks

Zelleria hepariella, a small, uniformly orange-brown moth, long and narrow with wings rolled over each other, and white legs. The moth has a distinctive “head down” pose

A female Palmate Newt moving towards the camera. It has a mostly greeny brown colouration with pinkish legs, a yellow belly and orange eyes

A couple of NFYs to the UV moth trap last night in SE #Northumberland. A very early Early Thorn, looking very striking, and Zelleria hepariella which was flitting around the window behind the trap but at midnight. Three Hebrew Character also recorded.
A female Palmate Newt was also seen.
#TeamMoth

Palmate Newt, a small greenish amphibian. Head shot showing orange eyes.

Palmate Newt, a small greenish amphibian. Side-on photo showing the small dorsal ridge and spotted tail

Palmate Newt, a small greenish amphibian, being held upside down to show the orange belly and unspotted pink throat

Nice to find this Palmate Newt out of the pond and helping to reduce my slug population, in my #Northumberland garden this evening. The unspotted throat separates it from the similar, more common Smooth Newt.
#Lissotriton #Amphibian

“If the Sun were a basketball, then the furthest known galaxy would be halfway to the closest star without a scale!” 🤯

And with that, it’s time for bed!

Certainly is. Very striking colours and quite large, too, compared to the common relation, Plutella xylostella.