Larva under water, it has a orange head with dark red pincers, and brown caterpillar like body, which is wrapped around a brown spire shell of a water snail which has little blobs of green algae on. All resting on a few strands of green pond weed

One thing on my list to film is this behaviour I witnessed a few years ago now.
Its a Great Silver Water Beetle larva eating a snail. It grabs the water snail with its asymmetrical mouthparts, wraps its body around it and uses brute force to crunch through the shell and get the soft chewy centre!

England wildlife watchdog ‘has stopped designating special sites for protection’ Exclusive: Report finds Natural England has created no new SSSIs, which protect areas from development, since 2023

The chief executive of @wildjustice.bsky.social
said: “While #NaturalEngland dithers and ‘reviews processes’, irreplaceable wildlife sites are being trashed, damaged, and even built over. That is not a technical failure, it’s a dereliction of duty.”
#naturecrisis
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Too much min/maxing mindset has bled over from the video game sphere. Video games are supposed to be fun! So is nature ID! Don't suck the fun out of it. Be okay with not knowing sometimes.

Screenshot of a tweet by Rep. Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) praising a breakthrough in pancreatic cancer research, calling it "the best of America" and noting that lead researcher Dr. Balachandran is the son of Indian immigrants and works at Sloan Kettering. He quote-tweets Ian Weissman, DO (@DrIanWeiss...), who reports that an mRNA pancreatic cancer vaccine showed lasting results in an early trial, with nearly all responding patients still alive six years later.

Science leads to amazing breakthroughs. Immigrants lead to amazing science.

The Ladybird Project The Ladybird Project The Harlequin Ladybird Harmonia axyridis, better known as the harlequin ladybird, was originally designated as a pest control method for local aphid populations in Europe. Howe…

The fungus will be Hesperomyces harmoniae - species have recently been split.

The Ladybird Project – Beetlehangers share.google/G5bJ5JCz8tLc...

Early Purple Orchid

Bluebells

Wild Garlic

Wood Anenome

Waresley Wood in Cambridgeshire doing its glorious Ancient Woodland thing today.
@ukorchids.bsky.social @wildlifebcn.org @brianecambs.bsky.social

Very cool #ant stuff for the weekend.

Original paper here:

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Our appeal to restore the North East's magical meadows begins in just THREE days! ✨🌼
From 22-29 April, your donation to revive these unique habitats and create homes for the Northern Brown Argus butterfly will be doubled 💚

donate.biggive.org/campaign/a05...

Two of Ingleborough’s finest flowers from today: Bird’s-eye Primrose Primula farinosa just coming into flower and a very early flowering Yorkshire Sandwort Arenaria norvegica subsp. anglica. Both on Sulber Pasture with Ingleborough brooding in the background.

And photograph the beetles and caddisflies the trap attracts - I think of them as insect traps with moths as part of the bye-catch!

And invite itinerant naturalists to join you occasionally? e.g. I spend a week or two each year up in Yorkshire and this could be a worthwhile detour from more obvious nature reserves :-)

Told by @bsbibotany.bsky.social VCR29 that Alan Leslie's 58 Goldilocks taxa now in database so couldn't resist a trip to Carlton & Dullingham for #Ranunculus crassilobus, argillicola & henslowii (Carlton, Boulder Clay & Henslow's). Db seems happy with the entries - as am I! 🤗🍷
#Botany #Cambridge

If you're looking for inspiration, try wlgf.org/garden-scien... Jennifer Owen achieved a lot, but had plenty of enthusiastic specialists (mostly amateurs) help with the identifications

Pan-species Listing (PSL) by BUBO Welcome to Pan-species Listing, online system for all species listing for any location in the UK.

Can't think of any funding, but if your garden is really interesting (I imagine yours might be!) maybe invite a local natural history society or Biological Records Centre to hold a bioblitz? Or join panspecieslisting.com and facebook group - use the power of the network to identify your photos

Good to see you back (and thanks for warning about the break in connection!)

A four-panel comic. In panel 1, two people are standing in the forest, wearing backpacks. The red-haired person says "I've never hiked with a naturalist before! I'm excited. I hope I brought enough water." The brown-haired person says "I'm sure you did. Let's go!" In panel 2, the brown-haired person points at various nature features. "Look, a red eft! It's the teenaged form of the Eastern Newt. Ooh, wintergreen! Wanna smell it? I hear a Chestnut-sided Warbler. Glacial till. Rubble of the last ice age!" In panel 3, the naturalist points to more nature items. "This forest seems early successional. Aw, a leafcutter bee with a piece of leaf! Wow, deer poor! Wow, fungi growing out of the deer poop!!" The red-haired person says "Okay, but..." In panel 4, the red-haired person continues, "It's been an hour and we've walked three feet." The brown-haired person exclaims, looking excited, "Three amazing feet!"

Sometimes you make a new comic, and sometimes you redraw an old one because you lost the original high res file 😅

Protozoa A wide range of organisms included here, but particular emphasis on testate amoebae, which build or make a protective case, often of silica, sometimes with particles glued to it in the manner of a cad...

I've just started exploring... years of harmless fun ahead. Some are so pretty! www.flickr.com/photos/clado...

Stentor polymorphus, 207 x 58 microns, ex shaded pond, Paxton Pits, x100 brightfield 0002 One of the key features is the multiple nuclei arranged like a string of beads (appearing as pale ovals here).

I hope it thinks I'm real... have some slightly charismatic microfauna to be sure: www.flickr.com/photos/clado...

GB hectad distribution map for Argiope bruennichi from the new SRS Atlas

GB hectad distribution map for Erigone welchi from the new SRS Atlas

Our new Atlas of UK spider, harvestmen and pseudoscorpion records is now online at britishspiders.org.uk/atlas. It gives access to 1.6 million records and is constantly updated with data submitted and verified via irecord.org.uk/enter-srs-records.

I like beetles, I like them a lot. So I’ve written a book about them to indoctrinate children. dk.com/products/978...

It's #WorldMicroscopeDay! Enjoy this peek into the hidden world living on the roof of the old brickworks at the Ramsey Heights nature reserve! Our CEO @brianecambs.bsky.social treated us to this close-up view of a fantastic array of micro-organisms collected in a moss sample.
@wildlifebcn.org

Cambridgeshire MP to introduce bill to protect UK chalk streams The 10-minute bill is set to go before Parliament on 25 February.

I co-sponsored this bill which aims to give chalk streams UNESCO world heritage status. These important habitats, 85% of which are in the UK, are at risk of drying out. Let’s protect the homes of plants, fish and aquatic mammals🌱🐠🦦
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The wonderful Patrick Barkham @patrickbarkham.bsky.social is running the 2026 London Marathon dressed as a 🦡 in aid of Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s land acquisitions for nature. Please watch his message and consider sponsoring him ☺️

They're elegant, beautiful and stylish.. but I'd argue these are fancier (if less elegant, beautiful or stylish): www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts...

The sock puppets of the plankton are back! This is the larva of a sand mason worm (Lanice conchilega) and it’s so adorable!! They make little tubes which they reach out of to grab food from their surroundings.

#marineplankton #zooplankton

The shelves have been burning it's been flying off them so fast! 🔥
Another cracker from Geoffrey Kibby, have you got your copy yet?
www.summerfieldbooks.com/product/cup-...

If you'd like to read the short paper about the original discovery of this extraordinary bee population, visit www.researchgate.net/publication/....

Stunning work
🧶 #knit

Female Brimstone is a delicate pale green. Here she's at an oblique angle wings folded together and abdomen raised towards the Alder Buckthorn twig.

A very poor shot, tomorrow I will look for the eggs, she laid about 20 during several visits. 2 are visible one on each leaf bud

Again abdomen raised towards the twig, she's just laid an egg which is visible as a tiny pale protrusion at the bottom of the leaf.

Side view wings folded but mostly open

310326 OM1ii my garden The first Mrs Brimstone has visited, thank you once again, @celastrina59.bsky.social. @bcyorkshire.bsky.social @savebutterflies.bsky.social #butterflies #inverts #nature #naturephotography #aurelians

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.>

Thanks, Housman