Month: January 2026
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Avatar
Yesterday I finally watched Avatar, the movie released in 2009 which I had avoided on the basis of extremely mixed reviews from friends. The driver was surprising – George Monbiot. I have been continuing with his book of articles for The Guardian (see previous posts), mostly through the section dealing with the super-rich, the ‘pollutocrats’,…
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Van Gogh
Winchester Science Centre, which opened in 2002: I very rarely use AI on my photos, hardly ever in fact, but I did here to remove the parked cars from the foreground because who wants to look at those? AI is brilliant for this. I confess it was very useful for perfectly translating the bookseller’s description…
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Dogs, manuscripts and ephemera
I’ve realised I can set my watch by the Great Spotted Woodpecker. She arrives each morning between 10.20 and 10.25 and feeds for about five minutes. Mostly, the smaller birds hang back but not one brave Great Tit who joined the GSW at the feeder this morning. The photo shows her with her tail curved…
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Sly Dunbar, Rest in Power
It is impossible to overstate the importance of drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie Shakespeare in the story of Jamaican music. The Riddim Twins played with and / or produced songs and albums by just about every reggae artist around. These are just some of them: Peter Tosh, Culture, The Mighty Diamonds, Dennis Brown, Gregory…
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Nature loss, the ogre in charge, police and border officers, dairy farming, headlights and parking, phone culture, and stained glass
Nature loss – not good says DEFRA “Nature loss is a national security risk, intelligence group warns”. The DEFRA (DEATHRA) report according to the BBC states that “The decline in the health of nature around the world poses a threat to the UK’s security and prosperity.” The document warns of “cascading risks” from the degradation…
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Birds and a squirrel, more from ‘Pretty girl in crimson rose (8)’, travels in Sweden and Turkey and an alarming plane stopover in Russia, wildlife art, the monster across the pond
The Grey Squirrel has been at the feeder for ages this morning, really feasting on the peanuts. As I headed to the summerhouse I suddenly realised he or she was wonderfully close to me and had not heard me coming. When awareness of my presence did come, there was no panic or rush to get…
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Pretty girl in crimson rose (8)
Pretty girl in crimson rose (8), a memoir of love, exile and crosswords, by Sandy Balfour, Atlantic Books, 2004. A lovely phone call which made my day yesterday from a client who was especially pleased with a book he had ordered (Twelve Sonnets, by George Faludy, translated by Robin Skelton, Pharos Press, Victoria, British Columbia, 1983,…
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More George Monbiot, Birdwatch
George Monbiot’s How Did We Get Into This Mess?: Politics, Equality, Nature, Verso, 2016, continues to shine. In ‘Civilisation is Boring’ his prose really takes flight, soars and sings. He quotes the pioneering conservationist Aldo Leopold: “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds ……
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MBR Acres acquittal, Brian May & Glastonbury, Cobalt, Orca dialects, Carden International Circus
Food elsewhere is no doubt scarce as the cold weather continues to bite, so there is as much varied bird life in the garden as there ever is. In just the last ten minutes I have seen no fewer than six Jackdaws, a pair of Greenfinches (not seen for a while), a Chaffinch, Robins, Blackbirds,…
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The Bayeux Tapestry, AI and Only Connect, George Monbiot on Lost Youth
-3.6 Celsius in the summerhouse this morning. I even had trouble getting in since the bolt on the door was frozen solid. Slowly it is warming up. The iced spider web above really stands out against the ivy and the fence – I much prefer this weather to the grey, rainy gloom of yesterday. The…
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Gordon Buchanan and Me; flea treatments for domestic animals; Peregrine Falcons, the illegal trade; George Monbiot
The image above is of a hand-coloured lithograph from Audubon’s Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, 1845-1848. I have pretty strong preferences when it comes to tv wildlife presenters. Ones I like and respect include Chris Packham, Liz Bonnin, Hamza Yassin, David Lindo and Steve Backshall. I despise the fraudulent Bear Grylls and my aversion to…
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RSPB Magazine & BTO News
RSPB Winter/Spring 2026 Chief executive Beccy Speight enjoys the “gentle purring” of Turtle Doves in Italy and takes from it a call to action and Yellowhammers are on the rise at RSPB’s Hope Farm. In both cases a primary factor in downturns has been intensive agricultural practices leading to a decline in wildflower seeds on…
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Birdwatch, Thylacine extinction, Penguins in prison, HS2, Pheasants and Woodcock, Ticks
Above, a little celebration of snow in the garden. The other photos in this post are from a folder on my PC which I had forgotten and were taken in 2018. I used a trailcam a lot then and seem mostly to have recorded squirrels, but I had not remembered the visits of a Jay.…
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Hercules the Bear
My only new year resolution is to get a new prescription for my glasses, long overdue. It is such an expense though (with a spare pair plus sunglasses) that I have been deferring it for over a year. The mornings of the second and third days of the year were spent unblocking a drain and…
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Annunciation
Annunziata Rees-Mogg, brother of Jacob, has made an announcement. Her name is Italian for annunciation, usually taken to refer to the appearance of the archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary. As if that family did not already have enough of a sense of its own importance. People who want to see an end to trail…