@petergknight.bsky.social
Writer. Landscape. Poetry. Glaciers. Two cats and a collie. Retired UK Geography lecturer. Around 53N, 2.7W. I wrote some books and many articles about glaciers. Now I'm working on a book about lakes.
Oh! I'll have to check that out! I just assumed it was a mole as we have lots of molehills in the fields etc, but if it looks like a water vole that would be exciting. We have seen them in the canal so it's possible. Thank you for the tip.
#FirstBirdOfMyDay was a pheasant complaining at being disturbed so early as I walked by torchlight along the canal. I'm calling him Mr Hodges after the Dad's Army character: "Turn that light out!"
Thank you. How far we have fallen in just two generations!!
It would have been my Dad's birthday today. That's him in the middle, with his parents, in 1918.
Our house came with a dull fir hedge. We let “weeds” grow through it and one of them is now a lovely yellow-flowered tree! Another one will have beautiful lilac blossoms later in the year. Let nature take its course a bit. #DailyNature
Good morning from Marbury. #sunrise #Cheshire #sky
#DailyNature Mr Mole has been busy adding points of interest to the canal towpath. It’s amazing how much is going on that we only notice because of little signs and tracks and clues.
You should remedy that condition!
This might be my best ever haiku. In response to the prompt “decode”. I am easily amused and yes I laugh at my own jokes.
I don't like decode.
It makes by dose run. I sneeze.
And I talk fuddy.
#haikufeels #prompt #decode
Two birds on the wire,
Thirteen ducks on the canal.
Me walking the dog.
I wrote about the likelihood of future water wars (essentially glacier wars) in my 1999 book "Glacier Nature and Culture".
Other sections less so. I’m not sure why Richard Feynman and T.S.Eliot are so close together here.
Sunday morning #shelfie Some parts of my home library are better organised than others. Most of my old movie #books are in one place, at least, even if some non-film items live there too! #library #booksky #cinema
Ha ha I use a version of that expression several times every day... it is perfectly normal in everyday English (that is, English English!). "What are you on about?" is a question my wife asks me most times I speak!
Yes on this walk there were also robins, dunnocks, linnets, redwings, blackbirds, wrens, bluetits, grey wagtails, house sparrows, great tits, crows, jackdaws, Jays, magpies, Goosanders, mallard, songthrush, goldfinch, pheasant, ... and more
Sound on to hear the bird-life soundtrack to my mid-morning walk, including the noisy lapwings! #DailyNature
On a dawn walk, First Bird was a distant Tawny owl asking why we were so late to the day, then Lapwing, Skylark, Yellowhammer, Raven, my 1st Chiffchaff of the year and a silent, sweeping Barn Owl patrolling the fields alongside the canal. #FirstBirdOfMyDay Wrens and blackbirds were noisy throughout
M is for mud, and murder, and millions of fish resting with their eyes open in the darkness of the bottom of a lake. Moments of sadness lying in wait on the sea floor. Moments listening to the interminable rain of silt. Moments you won't talk about.
#shelfie #books #BookSky
#Reading, on the whole, is good for you. As long as you think about what you have read.
Here too, but I'm lucky to live in a spot where they are both quite commonly to be found. Likewise the Yellowhammer.
On two short walks from my front door this morning I saw or heard (with my wife's expert help!) Yellowhammer, Skylark, Cetti's Warbler, Lapwing, Kingfisher, Fieldfare, Buzzard, Dunnock, House Sparrows, etc etc. on our lovely rural #Cheshire patch. #patchbirding
I'm too jumbled to remember which was the actual #FirstBirdOfMyDay but was very pleased on the early walk to hear Yellowhammers in the field for the first time this year, and to see a flash of Kingfisher - supersonic between the reeds and along the canal into the mist.
“Glaciers play the long game.”
Spring.
We watch for signs
And accept strange tokens.
A chicken that howls like a dog.
A dog that lays eggs for a week.
Trees that split their bark and burst green into
Pale sunlight that bleeds at last through diminishing clouds.
#DailyNature #poem
5.45am and dark but already blackbirds, robins and a song thrush were noisying up the neighbourhood. Then a close-by dunnock drowned them all out. Along the canal in the dusk a kingfisher flew across the moon's reflection, but was too fast for me to photograph. #FirstBirdOfMyDay #DailyNature
About all this stuff
To believe what they believe
The poets are fools.
Thank you!
Today’s #DailyNature is a big one: the turning of the Earth, the orbit of the Moon, the angle of the Sun… us in the void of space. Or, if you prefer, the moon setting behind Jill’s barn.
A crow. So far away across dark fields that it sounds tiny and makes the world seem huge. Like Proust's far-away train whistle that "punctuates the distance like a bird in the forest". #FirstBirdOfMyDay #DailyNature