My 1st bat of the season just now over the copse next door
🦇

Is it supposed to be 'temperate'?

Fast forward to 2026: blackcaps have been here all winter and singing all month. Not heard a cuckoo yet. Probably too deaf to hear a grasshopper warbler now

🪶 #Spring #Birdsong

Everything Will Swallow You, with an owl bookmark.

Everything Will Swallow You, with a Green Man bookmark.

Everything Will Swallow You, with a chicken bookmark.

THREAD. Today I'm giving away 3 signed hardbacks of my latest book, each with fab linoprint bookmarks, made by my mum Jo.

Repost & reply to enter.

You might like it if you like:
Folkloric creatures
Old records
Intricate psychedelic stories
The idea of circular time

All shares much-appreciated.

Stone circle

Good morning from the Merry Maidens

The Gothic Arch, early 1770s Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720 - 1778) Royal Academy of Arts

"The House is valuable because it is the House. It is enough in and of Itself. It is not the means to an end"

"It does not matter that you do not understand the reason. You are the Beloved Child of the House. Be comforted"

From the masterpiece that is Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke
#BookWormSat

You beat me to it!

Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath

This is next up for me

Just finishing Notes From The Burning Age by Claire North. Next up: Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
💙📚

Nearly 1 in 6 UK species are threatened with extinction.

We've lost 97% of our wildflower meadows since the 1930s.

We have 73 million fewer birds than in the 1970s - a decline of almost a third.

And yet some politicians still just see wildlife as a blocker to progress.

‘O wombat, agile, joyful, how have you grown, furry and round! Ah do not flee like a vagabond, do not vanish, burrowing through the world: it's really the weight of a hemisphere, not a light burden.’ ~ Christina Rossetti Illustration of wombat at top.

‘O wombat, agile, joyful, how have you grown, furry and round! Ah do not flee like a vagabond, do not vanish, burrowing through the world…’ ~ Rossetti

For National Pet Day, #BookWormSat will walk the dogs and curl up with the cats of literature. And the horses, mice, rabbits, rats, birds, wombats…

Painting of a woodland carpeted with light purple blossoms

Britain is home to almost half of the world’s bluebells, found in ancient or semi-natural woodlands, flowering in April and May. 'Bluebell woods' by contemporary UK painter Susan Entwistle #WomensArt

Heard my 1st whitethroats and reed warblers singing at Hook-with-Warsash LNR this morning. Also a courting pair of linnets and several skylarks. Sadly no terns or hirundines though

#birding 🪶

Ryohei Tanaka and the Quiet Precision of Winter In his 2008 work Snow and Crow, Ryohei Tanaka (b. 1933) utilizes etching and aquatint to capture a moment of stark, wintery stillness. The composition is dominated by the intricate, skeletal branches of a tree, rendered with the fine-line precision that is a hallmark of Tanaka’s architectural and landscape studies. A single black crow perches in the upper branches, while a hand-painted red persimmon provides a solitary, vibrant focal point against the falling snow and muted gray background. This juxtaposition of meticulous detail and a singular splash of color reflects a profound orchestration of visual elements, typical of the Japanese aesthetic priority for structural clarity and emotional resonance.

In his 2008 work Snow and Crow, Ryohei Tanaka (b. 1933) utilizes etching and aquatint to capture a moment of stark, wintery stillness.

A fourteenth-century image from an illuminated manuscript of King Croesus of Lydia hanging from the gallows with his hands behind his back. He is wearing a crown and has on a green tunic. Reference: Roman de la Rose, Morgan Library and Museum, MS. 185, f. 48r.

A crowned king, hanging from the gallows
(from the 14th-century Roman de la Rose).

Scarista, Isle of Harris

Graphic with pipes dumping sewage in a river and overlay text: "Sign the Petition: Hold a Referendum to bring the water industry into public ownership

Most of us want to see our water back in public hands, but never actually had a say.

That’s why I’m backing the Sewage Campaign Network’s petition for a referendum on water ownership.



Let’s reach as many people as we can: petition.parliament.uk/petitions/76...

A black and white print of the grass covered ramparts of an Iron Age hillfort with trees and a cloud filled sky with birds

It's #HillfortsWednesday at last (huzzah!)

Here's the eastern side of Rawlsbury Camp Iron Age hillfort in #Dorset

Its sinuous rampartular beauty captured by Howard Phipps in this stunning wood engraving print 😍

For more of Howard's art see:

howardphipps.co.uk

Tall, rain lashed trees with circling corvids. On the ground, a person and dog trudge away from the viewer.

'Winter. Rooks and Rain'. Gertrude Hermes, print from a linocut, 1950.

Drake Bay, Costa Rica

Forest giant, Osa peninsula, Costa Rica

Palm with epiphytes, Drake Bay, Costa Rica

Front cover of UK hardback copy of Katabasis, featuring an Escher-like staircase, King's College Chapel, and Archimedes the katabatic cat

"Meteorologically, Hell didn’t seem much worse than an English spring"

R.F. Kuang, Katabasis

#BookWormSat #Hell
💙📚

😳

Help us uncover the hidden lives of Europe’s ground-nesting bees When most people think about pollinators, they picture bees visiting flowers. But for many species, a large part of life happens elsewhere: in the soil. Many pollinators do not just feed above grou…

Join a new citizen science project and help us to uncover the hidden lives of Europe’s ground-nesting #bees - please share with your networks:

jeffollerton.co.uk/2026/04/02/h...

Examples:
They went out again to air that smelt of coal smoke and iron, of history stacked like skins in a tanner's yard

At the doors of small cafés, men like El Greco saints stood smoking in their heavy coats, imperturbable, between miracles

Mandarin drake, majestic and heraldic on Regent's Canal near London zoo yesterday

#Birds 🪶

Thoroughly enjoying The Land In Winter by Andrew Miller, loving his writing as always

Bonne chance! 🤞

Four wives, two passports and a very elusive butterfly: one woman’s search for her lepidopterist father Rena Effendi’s film Searching for Satyrus began with a quest for the endangered insect that bears her family name. Before long, she was reckoning with secrets, lies and the mysterious life of her wayw...

This is such a beautiful film - a must for butterfly lovers but everyone else as well. Screenings from April 19 - go and see it in a cinema! www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ma...

I have gull ID skills envy, would never have spotted these 😔