Laura Parker

Time to get over to Bewdley and help out with hot cake/book event sales!

He likes to think so.

Dawg.

Too cloudy here, but thanks for the prompt to look out: just enjoying some keweecking and toowhooping tawny owls.

Nature boys and girls – here’s your chance to get published in the Guardian Our wildlife series Young Country Diary is looking for articles written by children, about their autumn encounters with nature

Calling young people aged 14 and under! The Guardian is looking for your 250-word pieces of writing about nature and landscape for the Young Country Diary. Entry here (and published diaries will be paid): www.theguardian.com/environment/...

'...slathers of custard-yellow paint, white icing that casts shadows like Arctic snow: his painting is as calorific as cream, as smoothly spread as lemon curd.' @lauracummingart.bsky.social 's delicious piece will make you want to go see these cake paintings.

Rooks doing the same round here: uproarious gangs raking through the sheep field and leaving big patches of uprooted moss. Never seen it before.

A green woodpecker which, rather amazingly, seems to have taken up residence in the garden and whips around yaffling when I step out with the dog.

@realfarmed.bsky.social will also make a great setting on Wednesday. Picturing you arriving on Racing Lizzie.

Our friends at the brilliant @littletollerbooks.bsky.social have just launched a new crowdfunding project for 'Looking for Mr Schwitters' — an innovative and finely illustrated book about the émigré artist Kurt Schwitters’ final years in the Lake District www.caughtbytheriver.net/2025/09/look...

Beautiful poem that captures that moment so well. Was reminded of Paul Henry's Daylight Robbery (and C Day Lewis's Walking Away). Something particularly poignant about little boys leaving boyhood behind.

Would be a great project for you!

Mark! Would be a big task! Would definitely like to tick off a few more. I got to the 2 at Mungrisdale and one near Tebay.

46 I think made between 1996-2001. Original plan was for 100.You can find some (fairly sparse) info online. This is the most remote.

No the sheepfolds (over 40, all over Cumbria) were deliberately left not signed, no info. Other passing walkers didn't have a clue about it.

It's where it all belongs.

A large natural stone, its shape echoed by a cone built in drystone, within a sheepfold high in the hills in Cumbria.

Amid high green hills, drystone walls built in a square shape. At one corner, a large cone also built out of drystone.

Why go to a cosy city gallery to see Andy Goldsworthy's work when you can hike for 1hr up a steep path to a remote spot in the Howgills? Corner Cairn Fold, with its cutaway cone, was built on the site of an old sheep washfold in the wake of the devastating 2001 foot+mouth epidemic.

I like that! Currently gathering nr Cautley Spout. Bit of peril.

Yup to a shepherd's hut.

Not at all - thanks for catching!

Grr, that was an unexpected autocorrect! Thank you, I have reposted.

Herdwick sheep sure know how to pose.

A small flock of Swifts sweep across a clear blue sky, their slim bodies and crescent wings cutting sharply above the roof of a house. A beloved summer sight - and one at risk of disappearing if protections for nature are lost.

The tree you climbed as a child. Gone. The Swifts over your town. Gone. The air you breathe. Polluted. The river. Unsafe.

This is the reality of deregulation.

Cutting protections would mean disaster for nature & our economy.

Our CEO sets out why: rspb.org.uk/whats-happen... 👈

Wonderful. Internet/Google shall henceforth be referred to in this household as central information exchange which you can contact for any facts.

So looking forward to chatting to fellow country diarist and author @derekniemann.bsky.social about nearby nature, local landscape & chronic illness at #Heal #Rewilding in #Somerset next Tuesday.

If you're in the #Frome area, do come along and join us! 🦫🐛🦉🦔

www.tickettailor.com/events/healr...

I find the object eraser feature on my phone very useful for that kind of situation. You can just lasso eg stray kayakers and scrub them out! Great shots though.

No, what era is it? The illustrations are rather like yours!

September: Apple-picking. From Claire Leighton's The Farmer's Year.

James Rebanks enjoyably animated with engaged farming audience at FarmEd last night, on how it is an exciting time for soil-based livestock farmers and, whisper it, how he's all about cattle, not sheep these days. Should rename himself herdycowman.

Just been writing about Salley Abbey in Lancashire, named for its situation amid the willow (salix).