@grayseeallin.bsky.social Your style is impeccable as it evokes the great book illustrations that i love so well. I am English but have had a lifelong interest in American naturalism that so beautifully represents as you do the extraordinary solitude of the Northern scene. Lovely stuff for us all.

This is Walton on Thames car park oakwood by the cricket field where woodpeckers are drumming, it may not be big but it is beautiful.

3 great spotted woodpeckers males drumming today in Walton car park Oakwood. All competing for territory in the old trees. Each sound very different. Lovely

First brimstone butterfly of my year from Raynes Park station car park by Waitrose.

We have no chance against the rich and powerful.

Nothing new I’am afraid lobby men have corrupted both our and their systems of government so money has power over all eventually and the devil take the hindmost.

Sadly George, one only has to see the arrogance of the rich in their huge cars on the road to know what that means. It isn’t pretty at all. But it is a niche microcosm of behavior that one can see just going to the coffee shop or supermarket.

Shelduck species on the flooded fields at Garsons farm Esher. Common and Cape Shelduck look like escapes but no rings visible. Two days ago.

This species has been breeding on the Thames islands near Kingston Surrey for 5 years or more. I have see pairs and families either side of Kingston bridge.

Written in the year 2000 while working in Crystal Palace.

An old robin poem for you.

@rspb.bsky.social my new robin poem.

@rspb.bsky.social

@rcpsgheritage.bsky.social could you dig up some stuff on Kaolin Morph a cure used in every household in the UK and now banned. Happy new year to one and all.

Ps pair of Egyptian geese no binoculars today so may have missed something.

Garsons farm car park field now flooded more than I have ever seen. Usual suspects, swans, gulls, Canada geese, magpie, jackdaw, crow and pied wagtail.

I think this may be the first of 2 rhyming poems written in 2000s about the millennium tethers ballon on Vauxhall park.

3 nights over London’s streets and gardens, like moonlight but no moon is visible. Very strange indeed.

That’s it, but do they care? No, because climate deniers will never except the truth, whatever it looks like. Just as half the world believes Darwin was right and the other half don’t.

So why do people go on reproducing on a collapsing planet, I ask myself.

This beautiful Cucurbit just by New Malden car park behind the new Chinese Loon Fung supermarket yesterday. Any one know it’s name very pretty leaves. Squash maybe?

Garsons farm maize crop ploughed in and now attracting many hundreds of birds. At least 100 Canada geese, Egyptian geese with wood pigeons, stock doves, magpies, crows and jackdaws feeding on the fallen maize cobs. Amazing.

My sister Sarah Hunt, her beautiful Cabinet of Curiosities, the result of a life time of obsession with little, beautiful, strange and unusual things. Lovely

This is how new species might be formed from fertile hybrids, some believe.

In Spain I believe the expression is as follows ‘You can’t educate pork’.
The truth of reality is often hard to bare. The same attitudes are common among the hunting lobby in the UK.

There is another thought, the reproductive urge is so strong people cannot resist it’s power to overcome any doubts they may have. UK birth rate is dropping but families above the average, are they rising? What are the stats, I don’t know?

But people go on reproducing, in spite of what we know is happening. Is it that they prefer not to think about the consequences or just don’t care. The last proposition is that they don’t know what is going on in the world. Then of course there are the climate change deniers. Lots to consider eh?

Well done, I couldn’t put it better.

What has happened is that American culture and mores have had a powerful influence on the way we think and behave. Of course millions of both us and Americans behave in ways considered normal by most of us. I do so agree with you on every level.

With more research I have discovered that while this is a popular garden plant in the arid landscape of Texas actually it comes from similar dry habitats in parts of South America.

Pair of swallows over Squires Ditton near Surbiton. Overflying now, often sits on wire nearby the Buddhist temple.