Author: bish
-
Greylag and Bewicks over the Severn
I’m so very grateful to be living so close to the river Severn, with all the sights she offers. Brown and fearsomely tidal, she is home to so many creatures. Here are a couple of shots from a walk the other day. The ancestor of most domestic geese, the greylag is the largest and bulkiest…
-
Water Rail
Water Rails are shy birds, and I was delighted to see one emerge from the reedbeds and cautiously dig around for breakfast… Not the first time of seeing for me, but this time it came right out and had a swim in the very flooded wetlands around Slimbridge WWT. It looks very diffferent in swim…
-
Blue Badge
I’m working up an annoyance into a rant, with a view to evolving it into a solution. If you’re not in the UK (and other regions may have similar systems), the Blue Badge is a permit that allows disabled drivers and or passengers to park more easily, including in places otherwise restricted. For some, that…
-
Pedestrian
We’ve not really been out much over the past few days… the brief snowfall earlier in the week and then the consistently below zero days (it’s currently minus six and destined to be minus nine tonight) has meant walking is more hazardous than driving – and driving on minor roads isn’t great. But just look…
-
Winter arrived!
I smile at the title of the previous post… “winter arrives” it proclaimed. But it hadn’t. It has now. For all its beauty it’s brutal for anyone, human or non-human, without a warm nest to snuggle into. UK or Ukraine, there are people out there making the best of a dreadful existence. May peace return,…
-
Winter arrives
The summer seemed unending, and it felt almost inconceivable that we might slip back into winter, but the planet’s tilt will not be ignored no matter how much carbon we throw into the air. Winter is here. I woke to -6ºC this morning, and a bright crisp frost under the bluest sky. The village lay…
-
Now we are all minorities…
Today the Office of National Statistics (ONS) revealed more information from the 2021 Census in England and Wales, and it was the bit about the voluntary question on Religion. Now, I’m not going to get side tracked, but there’s an interesting subtext here about the census. Are we a united kingdom or not? Why is…
-
Birch…
It’s National Tree Week… According to the UK Tree Council, at least… for some of us every week is tree week. It prompted me today to post onto Mastodon a photograph I took in Sweden several years ago, of a delightful stand of silver birch trees. From there it was a simple journey (in fact…
-
The Royal Family
Another lovely day, filled with sunny walks on dappled tow-paths and pubs with pies and pints a-plenty. And Kingfishers! I’ve done a page of kingfishers before but one is never enough to capture the irridescence of these marvellous predators. And this time I’ve got both the male and the female. I’m particularly pleased with the…
-
tldr: bah humbug
The month of November has zipped past, and I was slightly shocked earlier today to notice Christmas cards were being displayed in receipients’ windows… and I’m struggling to find any enthusiasm at all for sending any myself this year. Christmas cards. Ok, for a moment let’s step away from the fact that Christmas is not…
Rosher.Net 