Joey Pickard

A Dark-edged Bee-fly sat on a leaf, basking in sunshine - library photo by @kitenet.bsky.social

Bee-flies are go! A 1st #BeeFlyWatch record for 2026 is in, from east Surrey on 26 Feb. Look out for more during warm & sunny spells over coming weeks, & please send in sightings, via iRecord if possible. Full details on the @dipteristsforum.bsky.social website: dipterists.org.uk/bee-fly-watch

A racist, absurd cartoon character Was the inspiration for this comic book villain

The life and times of Bilious Barrage

Enough said

Alongside being a nature and moss nerd, I am also a comic book nerd. If anyone isn’t familiar with the 2000AD villain Bilious Barrage, please enjoy. He last appeared in the comics in 2016 in the final weeks run up to the brexit vote.

It’s when the sheep start talking back that I think we have to start worrying

Dipwell (actually stilling well) 1 in a ditch

Dipwell 23, a pipe in a Molinia bog

Looking back on photos from instrumenting the bog this last week, it’s become clear to me that somewhere in the four days of lone working between installing dipwell 1 and dipwell 23, i did in fact lose my mind

Frogspawn in a puddle

Sun shining over the Neath Valley, looking northeast from the summit(ish) of Cefn Morfudd

Swansea bay in the sun from the summit of Cefn Morfudd, near Tonna, Neath

First frogspawn in the bog of the year for me today. Along with the first real bit of sun I’ve felt for months at this point I think. Much more enjoyable dipwell installing weather than Monday

A dead or dying Sitka spruce on a mound of peat excavated for planting

A dead Sitka spruce on a mound of drying peat left from planting

A dead Sitka spruce on a mound of peat excavated for planting, next to the pit the peat was dug out from

Some VERY healthy and happy looking Sitka that were planted on deep peat on a site I work on. I’m of course devastated about it. Check out the cracking on that excavated peat dollop. Hard to even think about the carbon balance for planting on 1m+ of peat when the trees don’t even survive 18 months

A forest to bog site in south wales, the trees are about 400m away, shrouded by heavy rain and fog. The site is covered in tree stumps

A logging stilling well in a ditch on a forest to bog restoration site

A logging stilling well in a ditch on a forest to bog site. The yellow thread lock is actually Rimmel London quick dry nail varnish which works better and is much cheaper than the commercial alternative. Don’t tell anyone, trade secret

Absolutely shocking weather but still managed to get some logging dipwells and stilling wells into the bog today. Two sites down, three to go before the end of the week!

Could you become BSBI's new Wales Officer, helping support the network of botanists across Wales & leading our Priority Plants in Wales Project?
You'd be helping to conserve rare & beautiful wild plants, like this lovely Radnor Lily.
For more details & how to apply, visit:
bsbi.org/about/people...

A border collie in a red harness on a beach looking at a ball in a ball launcher

Feel very proud of Indy because today he went to school with my partner to meet the SEND kids in the STF to help them learn about pets and dogs and be comfortable around animals and he was very well behaved and did a great job. I expect the absolute mountain of treats he was bribed with helped

A mountain road through a blanket bog

I drive over this road all the time and always think there’s a nice experimental design in waiting here as a result of the road which was slapped through the dead centre of the bog. One side is heavily grazed and one isn’t. Probably one of the only places in the valleys with peat but no conifers.

When I do bryological surveys I used keep my samples alive in pots rather than dried in a moss packet so they began to be called my bootleg bryophytes as they grew on. I named my blog, which no longer exists, bootleg bryophytes and then have used that as a name for everything since

I tried to get that back in the twitter days but found that Charlie Campbell had already taken it. I was simultaneously delighted to find someone with the same sense of humour as me and devastated the name was taken! I was also gutted that someone took Captain Pickard

Make a difference!
Join the dynamic and successful NPAP team, aiming for #HighNatureLowCarbon
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#GreenJobs #jobs #Wales #environment

#InternationalDayOfWomenAndGirlsInScience
Karen Wilkinson, Survey and Monitoring Team Leader for the Peatland Programme is one of the #WomenInScience contributing to future generations, aiming for #HighNatureLowCarbon through #WalesPeatlandAction.
@natreswales.bsky.social @iucn-uk-peat.bsky.social

Nice! Is that the path up the back of the coop in pontycymer? I’ve got some film I’ve been desperate to use on something good. Kingfisher would be a great one to try

Sphagnum moss stained black

Sphagnum moss stained black

Very emo Sphagnum on site today. Must have heard the rumours of a new my chemical romance album this year and (as I’ve been considering) dyed its hair black like it’s 2008 again. Caused by deposition of organic C and humic acids when peaty water evaporates as far as I know #MireChemicalRomance

Awesome, thanks! @cofnod.org.uk could I drop you an email about upland bog spiders?

Well, here I am, on the fringes of the peat person blob. I’m devastated and shocked beyond words that there is no moss and liverwort enthusiast megacluster. Small consolation that I’m not with the birders

How many of the species that are vulnerable and dependant on upland peat areas would be reliably ID-able without dissection? I’ve been trying to run a masters project in South Wales for years on peaty spiders but never found the right student. Would very much like to get some data for our sites

The Money spider Eriogone welchi occurs at altitude in very wet Sphagnum moss lawns: it is Red Listed as Endangered. Image copyright: Richard Gallon.

Another Money Spider, Maro lepidus, is also restricted to extremely wet, Sphagnum filled pools and is lost if the peat dries. It's Red Listed as Endangered. Image copyright: Richard Gallon

Minicia marginella, another tiny Money Spider, was classified as 'data deficient' because so little was known about it when the last GB Red List was complied. Now, we know that it's another characteristic species of upland mires with an extremely restricted distribution. Image copyright: Richard Gallon

Few upland peat mires remain undamaged by human activity, including afforestation and burning. The, often very small, areas that remain intact are home to some highly specialist spider species

The Marsh Wolf Spider Hygrolycosa rubrofasciata, restricted to a handful of fens in East Anglia and southern England, is currently Endangered but loss from known sites puts it as risk of becoming Critically Endangered. Image copyright: Richard Gallon

The tiny Jumping spider Neon valentulus is restricted to a few East Anglian fens where it particularly susceptible to climate change induced summer droughts. It's already Critically Endangered. Image copyright: Richard Gallon

The Money spider Baryphyma gowerense occurs in fens and occasionally salt-marshes in a very small number of sites in Norfolk and Wales. It is Vulnerable to extinction. Image copyright: Richard Gallon

In Britain, Rosser's Sac Spider Clubiona rosserae is known from only one East Anglian fen. It's currently considered Vulnerable to extinction. Image copyright: Richard Gallon

Britain's remaining alkaline fens are small, isolated fragments that are vulnerable to desiccation from drainage of surrounding agricultural land and climate change. Together with Globally Red Listed Fen Raft Spider, many of their specialist spider species are threatened:

The fact that George Osborne and Nick Clegg, two parts of the triumvirate of absolute melts who’s efforts from over 10 years ago still make my life worse every day, have respectively had big roles in Open AI and Meta doesn’t make me have much hope that those companies will ever not be awful

3 weeks since launching our 'Save the Small Blue at Cwm Tips' #Crowdfunder and we’ve raised £915 - nearly halfway! 💙

Thank you for your support 💚

If you would like to donate, visit: www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/save-the-s...

#SaveTheSmallBlue #GloiNatur #CoaltoNature #Nature #Wales #Cymru #Wildlife

A cup of ‘coffee’ which can only be described as cruel and unusual. I had fruit tea for the remainder of the day. The layer of oil on top of the actual coffee was quite something, it was thick enough that I could poke it and it would remain as one layer. Any more and Trump would probably try and claim my mug for national security purposes.

I don’t like to use social media to complain but feel compelled to share this photo of the worst cup of coffee I have had for some years, from an event I was at recently. Marked down for taste, smell and general overly oily nature. Well grim. Just look at the sheen on it!

Has anyone sent you the list we worked up from Swansea/Lost Peatlands yet?

We visited Penyrenglyn Tip today with the students of Black Mountains College (Treherbert), discussing wildlife recording techniques and how these can be used to better understand the biodiversity of coal spoil sites.

Great to see the next generation getting hands-on with nature and heritage 💚

Finally updating contact details and affiliations - now "lead specialist advisor" for peatlands at Natural Resources Wales.

Get in touch if you want to develop research proposals in Wales. We have sites of ongoing and future restoration, friendly people and so much data...

Two sheep skeletons in a patch of rushes on a bog

Lowlight from this week - after it took weeks (or months?) to get installation permission for dipwells off the landowner, i walked the whole site to our pre planned, signed off location that hadn’t been ground truthed, found this grisly scene, at a localised patch of peat too shallow for the well

A hole in a peat bog - a trial pit showing different layers of peat and plant material

A surveyor in a hi visibility jacket in a peat bog using a magnetometer to look for unexploded WW2 ordnance

A dipwell in a peat bog - a 42mm (outside diameter) pvc pipe with a filtering geosock and protective yellow netting. This is inserted into the peat and houses an automatic sensor which measures water level (derived from a water pressure value) every hour. The whole pipe is later anchored to the underlying strata below the peat

A hole in a bog - a trial pit and the material excavated in it showing the stratigraphy of the peat. The excavated material is returned to the trial pit and the end of the survey

Some more trial pits and dipwell installations, this time under unexploded ordnance supervision at the Cefn Morfudd Lost Peatlands site. Some great stratigraphy on show in some of them, nice to have some clear bands of soil to point to in the contract specs and PowerPoints down the line

WALES

It occurred to me overnight that (more by luck than design) I've been building quite a nice set of work that's an overview of contemporary Wales. It touches on the landscape, the arts, politics and more, and has been totally organic and unplanned. Maybe I should make a plan!