Lesley Totten

bit.ly/3tgxjGS

This week’s Big Issue is out today! 🗞️

🦅 Claire Foy talks H is For Hawk
⭐️ Meet the 15-year-old girl helping homeless families
🌳 Get ready to birdwatch

Read a sneak peek here. 👀 www.bigissue.com/behind-the...

Grey sky. On a rainy January day. No colour. A huge huge metal pylon stretches up into the sky. 190 metres up into the rain.

Recorded on a grey cold day like today. This was one of our most extreme records. We got absolutely drenched!

Episode 153 - Freezing January rain under Britain's highest pylon (23min)

Sharp winter rain. Drops gathered on metal above, falling heavier through the hum

www.podbean.com/ew/pb-k4c7y-...

Hen Harrier killing continues on England’s #grouse moors in 2025. A parliamentary debate back in June did not generate a step change.

Blog: markavery.info/2026/01/20/r...

Photo: Dynamo/Ivan Ellison

@rspbinvestigations.bsky.social @northyorkmoors.org.uk @forestofbowlandnl.bsky.social
#Defra

10 native wildflowers in bloom

This week’s #TheWinter10 -
Common Field Speedwell, Groundsel, Yarrow, Hazel (flower & catkin), Stinking Hellebore, Primrose, Common Ragwort, Daisy, Dandelion & Red Deadnettle
#WildflowerHour

It's Sunday, it's 8pm so it must be #WildFlowerHour!
Please share pix of any wild or naturalised plants you spotted coming into bloom last week across Britain & Ireland.
Mystery plant?
Use #WildFlowerID to summon help from the friendly @wildflowerhour.bsky.social botanical community!

Some budding Winter Aconites for this week's #WildFlowerHour, in our local Cambridgeshire park.
@wildflowerhour.bsky.social
@bsbibotany.bsky.social

Cut-leaved Dead-nettle (Lamium hybridum) - a bright green plant with paired leaves with sharp lobing dissecting the leaf margins. A small pinkish flower is just visible. Growing against a backdrop of stones and soil, in the open circle at the base of a planted street tree.

Henbit Dead-nettle (Lamium amplexicaule), growing in a gravelly margin just in front of a square wire fence. The red stems raise it above the low basal rosettes and mosses also growing in the verge here. It has paired green leaves, the lowest with short stalks and the higher ones more or less sessile (stalkless). A tiny pink flower is just visible on one of the right-hand plants.

Two nice urban flowers for #wildflowerhour today: Cut-leaved Dead-nettle, with its 'cut' lobed leaves, and Henbit Dead-nettle, with rounded, unstalked upper leaves. Both in flower for #TheWinter10, if you squint hard enough!

Both locally scarce, and new finds for this bit of industrial Falkirk.

A circular arrangement of early wildflowers and catkins laid on a neutral background. Each stem is placed with care and named on a small handwritten slip of paper. Snowdrop, primrose, daisy, winter aconite, white dead-nettle, hazel catkins, alder catkins, and cow parsley leaves form a gentle wheel, with the soft green of the parsley weaving between them. Shells anchor the names. The overall feeling is quiet, intimate, and devotional — like a small seasonal altar or medicine wheel made from wild things.

Wandering our heartland, I gathered a small constellation of wildflowers — snowdrop, primrose, daisy, aconite, dead-nettle, hazel, alder, cow parsley — each gently present. Arranged in a circle, they became a kind of medicine wheel: not of knowing, but of noticing. #WildflowerHour #NoticingNature

For #wildflowerhour it’s the humble but important to science, Thale Cress, Arabidopsis thaliana.
The first plant ever to have its genome sequenced

Thank you for sharing your winter ten! 👏🏻🌿🌸

A collage of late winter wildflowers, showing close-up photographs of small purple, white and yellow blooms alongside fresh green leaves and hazel catkins, including dead-nettles, dog’s mercury, sweet violet, field speedwell, snowdrops, primrose, winter aconite and cyclamen, photographed outdoors in soft natural light.

I can add a couple more wildflowers to the list this week, dog’s mercury and winter aconite! Here are my #TheWinter10: red dead-nettle, dog’s mercury, sweet violet, snowdrop, field speedwell, hazel catkins, primrose, winter aconite, white dead-nettle and cyclamen. #WildflowerHour

Spurge Laurel, Daphne laureola, at Hutchinson's Bank in Croydon. For me this is one of the heralds of a new year of botanising, bringing with it the anticipation of seeking out new (to me) species, and the revisiting of familiar ones. Always something new to learn! #WildflowerHour

Good evening @wildflowerhour.bsky.social from soggy Edinburgh - this evening we have Dandelion and Herb Robert along the Water of Leith (Bonnington area) @wolct.bsky.social a strange stormy afternoon 💦🌸🌼💦 #wildflowerhour

This wintry weather is really zapping our wonderful wild plants!
Three cheers for everyone who braved the elements to hunt for flowers & post them here for #WildFlowerHour.
Have a great week, keep warm, see you next Sunday!
@wildflowerhour.bsky.social

For #wildflowerhour this chilly week: alder, European gorse, stinging nettle and hemp agrimony

A fabulous winter ten Kate! 👏🏻🌿🌸❄️

Winter aconites pushing through the just thawed ground #drneilsgarden for @wildflowerhour.bsky.social #wildflowerhour

It’s Sunday & it’s 8pm so it must be time for #wildflowerhour but did you manage to find anything in bloom amidst the snow & ice!!! 🥶❄️

It almost looks like a wee ‘field Edelweiss’ ! 🤍🌱

Thanks Dave. Mmmm I’m going to have to revisit this wee plant !

Somewhat sad-looking flowers of Wild Radish Raphanus raphanistrum subsp. raphanisttrum

Oat Avena sativa, found flowering in a churchyard

Cut-leaved Dead-nettle Lamium hybridum just flowering - some plants had more open flowers...

A final #NewYearPlantHunt on my birthday round suburban streets of Longthorpe in Peterborough - a much lower total than on previous hunts, with just 37 species but some new including Wild Radish, Oat and the first few flowers of Cut-leaved Dead-nettle.

#wildflowerhour @bsbibotany.bsky.social

A very Happy Birthday to the fabulous @sarahlambert7.bsky.social!
She is one of our amazing #BSBICountyRecorders and does a huge amount for botany and botanists in Northants. and more widely.
Huge thanks to Sarah for spending her birthday taking part in #NewYearPlantHunt and #WildFlowerHour!

Oh thank you so much - tho my companion did most of the ID 😅 I will say tho that the two of us are currently in the top ten of the #newyearplanthunt leader board for Scotland Nearly 30 flowering plants ! 😱

A plant with blue, star-shaped flowers.

A plant with purple flowers, shaped a bit like a bell, opening into a star shape.

A short thread for #WildflowerHour showing off #TheWinter10 achieved while doing the #NewYearPlantHunt on Friday in Dawlish. These two are the two common Bellflower species, Trailing Bellflower and Adria Bellflower (I've heard other names for the latter, not sure which is official)/

White flowers and green leaves of Cow parsley against a dark green background.

Day 11, #12DaysWild. Cow parsley in flower for a #NewYearPlantHunt back in Ely. #WildflowerHour @bsbibotany.bsky.social

My husband always buys me beautiful secondhand reference books for Christmas, but he forgot to give me this one, till today. I love it! Not least because of the story of how it came about…

Perfect timing for the last day of @bsbibotany.bsky.social ‘s #NewYearPlantHunt

#wildflowers

Winter walk this pm at Selm Muir Wood, W Lothian, looking for #HairIce. Mission accomplished! @edinburghnats.bsky.social. Only one flowering plant for #NewYearPlantHunt @bsbibotany.bsky.social @bsbiscotland.bsky.social

A #WinterTen for @wildflowerhour.bsky.social thanks to my #BlackfordBotanyBuddy & #NewYearPlantHunt @bsbibotany.bsky.social V cold but great plant hunting 🥶🌱🌸💚 Scratching my head re Field Madder tho - flower parts or leaves ? #WildFlowerHour All #BlackfordHill or #Bawsinch @scotwildlife.bsky.social

It’s a good job I did @bsbibotany.bsky.social #NewYearPlantHunt yesterday as this morning everything was covered in snow! Only 13 species seen in bloom but enough for #thewinter10! A single Cherry Plum flower looking lovely for #wildflowerhour & new to me, Hawthorn flowering alongside its berries! 😮