Steve Preddy

Hi Annie. Yes, I think it’s very likely that they’ll be found there: they’re at Magor Marsh which is only about 3km away.

Willow Emerald Watch - British Dragonfly Society

More images and lots more info about the species can be found here:

british-dragonflies.org.uk/recording/wi...

Willow Emerald oviposition scars

The latest Monmouthshire dragonfly newsletter, a Willow Emerald special edition, is now in your inbox if you’re on the mailing list. If you’re not, and would like to be, please message me or drop a reply below.

@britishdragonflies.bsky.social

#gwentdragonflies

As well as about 1300 other species and I have only 3 weeks left to try to memorise them all! 😂

A Purple Sandpiper this afternoon at Peterstone Pill with a Dunlin flock then flew southwest (also the female Scaup still). #gwentbirds

Hi @churchartnature.bsky.social feel free to DM me here, I’m not using X any more.

Thanks. It’s a fascinating study and It would be really interesting to see how it looks if extended to include the other countries.

Breaking News!
Code UFB!!!

The three-year running mean for the global surface temperature anomaly now exceeds 1.50°C over the pre-industrial baseline, as of November 8, 2025.

Are you there, COP 30? It's me, the Paris Agreement.

Hi. Does this cover just England or Wales too?

Desperately seeking three French hens and a partridge in a pear tree to join these two Oriental Turtle Doves. Yes, it was back to the drawing board overnight and a retrospective ID on one of the 'turtle' doves we'd already retrospectively identified yesterday. A thread...

bsky.app/profile/stev...

Or take “Saturday”. Also a proper noun, because there is only one day of the week called Saturday, but one which there are very many instances of, but we don’t write “I saw a sedge warbler last saturday”. 8/8

So, saying “I saw a Sedge Warbler” is consistent with this approach, and so if you’re arguing that it’s incorrect to say “I saw a Sedge Warbler” then you also need to argue that the correct usage in the newspaper analogy is “today’s guardian” / “a guardian”. 7/8

Take “The Guardian”. There is only one newspaper with this name, so it’s a proper noun. When someone refers to an article in “Today’s Guardian” or goes into a newsagent to buy “a Guardian” they are using “Guardian” as a common noun, but retain the initial capitals. 6/8

Making a case for the use of initial capitals when referring to a lineage (a proper noun), and lower case when referring to an individual organism that’s part of that lineage (a common noun) is not unreasonable. However, that’s not what we do in other situations like this. 5/8

I suspect that the reason people think that English names are common nouns is because they think of sentences like “I saw a sedge warbler”: in this instance they are referring to a member of a class of things, and so they believe that lower case should be used. 4/8

A species is a singular entity: there is only one species called Sedge Warbler on the evolutionary tree. If one writes “the sedge warbler is a migratory bird”, in that sentence, Sedge Warbler is a proper noun and so use of lower case is incorrect. 3/8

The fundamental difference between a proper noun and a common noun is that proper nouns are used to refer to singular entities, whereas common nouns are used to refer to classes of such entities. So: David Bowie, Birmingham vs musician, city. 2/8

I thought it worth copying (with a few small edits) my short thread here from 2021 from the platform which shall not be named, on why there are perfectly valid grammar-based reasons for supporting Graeme’s view on this. 1/8

[Scene is the entrance cabin to a NATIONAL TRUST PROPERTY AND GARDENS] 1 NATIONAL TRUST EMPLOYEE [inside cabin]: Hello there 2 [A young family - two parents two kids - have arrived at the front desk]. DAD: Hi - do you have an activity trail, for the kids? 3 NT EMPLOYEE: Of course – you’re just in time for the Autumn Gammon Trail! 4 MUM: That sounds fun, doesn’t it kids? 5 NT EMPLOYEE [handing an activity sheet and pencils to the kids]: Every autumn, the Reform Trust gammons flock back to the National Trust for the AGM. Just follow the trail round the grounds, and see how many you can spot! 6 NT EMPLOYEE [hearing something in the gardens]: Listen - that's their call [Calls emanating from the landscape]: tut-tut woke-woke 7 NT EMPLOYEE [showing the family an apparently empty fenced enclosure with some bushes in]: They are extremely sensitive and fragile... But you can bring them out of hiding if you put a little sign down mentioning slavery. 8 KIDS [pointing]: There they are! [Some little red faced PEOPLE wearing Barbour jackets and gilets emerge cautiously from the bushes. They are creeping towards a TINY SIGN in the middle of the enclosure]. [Little people noises]: woke-woke tut-tut woke-woke 9 [Close-up of the TINY SIGN - we can read that it says]: Slavery had a bit to do with building this massive house. [Noises from the little people again as they inspect the tiny sign]: tut-tut woke-woke 10 MUM [pointing]: What's that one doing there? NT EMPLOYEE: Oh, that's so sweet… 11 [We see that one of the people is sat on a rock, with a little laptop open on a tree stump, and they are furiously typing away]. NT EMPLOYEE: I think he's writing a column for the Daily Telegraph… 12 [We see close up to the little person’s screen, it is a word document reading]: Are National Trust scones secretly WOKE? [ends]

If you're a National Trust member, it's that time of year again: Midnight tonight is the deadline. It's a shame people have to keep doing this to keep a toehold on historical truth in this country, but here we are. Voting link: www.nationaltrust.org.uk/who-we-are/a...

Successfully twitched from Norwich in my first term at Uni, and the species I’ve been waiting longest for seconds of.

eBird Checklist - 15 Oct 2015 - 台北--野柳IBA(Yeliu IBA) - 11 species (+1 other taxa) Submitted by Maggie Chen.

Hi Max, there’s a photograph of an adult male Siberian Thrush in this October eBird checklist from Taiwan: ebird.org/checklist/S2...

This looks very different from the Shetland bird. What’s your thinking as to why the latter is an adult?

Screen grab of a 2010 news article with the headline and stand first: "Sausage-addicted kookaburra too fat to fly BIRD became so obese from barbecue handouts she was unable to escape mauling."

I will take no further questions

Monmouthshire dragonfly newsletter number 12 is now available, with news on Willow Emeralds, Scarce Chaser, Lesser Emperors, Red-veined Darters, Common Hawker and Hairy Dragonfly. DM me if you’re not on the mailing list but would like to be. #gwentdragonflies
cc @britishdragonflies.bsky.social

I’ve just found another absurd one: ´Wryneck head twisting’ gave me this:

It got itself completely tangled up in knots when I asked about “phalarope underwing patterns” (try it) and as for “large white-headed gull identification”, well …

///escape.unrealistic.silly This is the what3words address for a 3 metre square location near Port Talbot, Neath Port Talbot.

Six juv Sabine’s Gulls and 2 Grey Phals off the end of Jackstone’s pier, Aberavon currently.

w3w.co/escape.unrea...

Is that doughnut as in the thing I eat more often than I should, or the thing that the youth do in their cars in the Sports Village car park?

Zitting cisticola
Walberswick, Suffolk, 23/08/2025
I thought I was having a good day with an image of one of the juveniles from the 1st recorded breeding of Zitting cisticola in the UK. On review I found four juveniles and the adult female🤯
@suffolkbirdgroup.bsky.social #suffolkbirding #ukbirding

Glos B-w Kite showing on & off this am, up to c1km N & c500m S of Splatt Bridge. Unlikely to be visible from Slimbridge hides when perched though gets quite high when flying so may be visible from estuary tower / summer walkway, but for now, Frampton’s the better bet. Cc @glosterbirder.bsky.social