Something very unexpected and lovely happened yesterday... and I'm still pinching myself that my name is on this gorgeous medal from the BTO.

Best evening ever!!!

AND I got to see this year's amazing Society of Wildlife Artists exhibition, too!

Today was Nature Studies with my granddaughter, Arrietty. We went foraging in the garden and local woods for fallen leaves, hips, haws, nuts & berries... and Arrietty created this beautiful Nature Mandala on the kitchen table with our finds!

Made with....

a hawthorn berry, spindle berries, clematis seedheads, hazelnuts, catkins, magnolia seeds, ivy berries, ivy leaves, bracken, hazel leaves, dogwood leaves, snowberries, sweet chestnuts, rose hips, beech leaves, and (from a friend's tree) walnuts.

🎃 Please don’t dump your #Halloween 🎃in the countryside if hedgehogs 🦔 eat them they are very likely to die as they can’t digest them & it leads to dehydration ☹️

My daughter Charlotte @DearUniverse_cs now has a studio shop... and it opens tomorrow. Do go along if you can!

'The Studio Shop' is at the back of Pop!Doune on the edge of the Trossachs, in the beautiful village of Doune...

Noticing Nature

I’ve been absent from the virtual world, enchanted instead by fairies who insist I write their stories.

Then, as if by magic, fly agaric — surely the most fairytale of fungi — appeared beside the Fairy House.

Perhaps Nature approves. Perhaps the fairies do too.

Redwing stripping the last of the Rowan berries on Bodmin moor today.

When tidying the garden, avoid burning garden debris on a bonfire. Instead, pile up branches and fallen leaves in a quiet corner. This provides shelter for hedgehogs, beetles, toads, slow worms and other animals.
More tips for nature-friendly gardens:
littlegreenspace.org.uk/features/5-tip…

This book is STUNNING. Do have a look...

I spent a happy afternoon watching the #Dipper who's recently taken up residence on our village stream. I've missed there being Dippers SO much this year.

Listen carefully and you'll hear him/her singing above the sound of the water... without opening his beak!

Forest pancakes #FungiFriday

Relieved to see hedgehogs back in our garden. They've been conspicuous by their absence this summer, but the food in their feeding station is being eaten again... and we caught at least 2 different individuals on the camera traps last week #hedgehogs

I used to have hedgehogs living in the garden that I would see every night and share photos and videos of regularly: there were at least three different individuals including the named resident female Henrietta.

This was until landlord of the neighbouring property decided to clear their entire garden— all of the trees, all the shrubs, all the bramble, everything was torn up and thrown out.

They also tore down the shared fence between our gardens which had been an old wooden fence covered in ivy, with plenty of gaps for the hedgehogs to pass through. They built a brand new 6ft tall impenetrable fence.

The construction of this fence may seem minor but it means that wildlife like hedgehogs can no longer pass through. The removal of the plants from that garden means that the hedgehogs lost a huge part of their foraging and living area.

I have not seen a single hedgehog in our garden since the neighbour made these changes. I don’t know if it’s because they can’t get in past the new fences, because they were scared away, or possibly because they were killed in the renovations.

I look for Henrietta often and wonder what happened to her. Did she get fenced out of our garden permenantly? Did she get taken away with the branches and leaf litter? Did she get fenced inside the neighbours garden and find herself unable to get back out? I’ll probably never know.

I’ve made some gaps in the new fence now and though I wait for the hedgehogs to return, it has been several months now and I still haven’t seen any.

Hedgehogs are a Red List species in the UK, yet landowners seemingly have no requirement to consider them whatsoever in any renovations they make. I pleaded with the neighbouring landlord (via some very patronising estate agents) to leave some habitat intact. They ignored me.

Have you put the 31st October in your diary!? We’d love to see you for ‘The Season Turn and Studio Shop Opening’ - new venture, new collab, new feels - can’t wait. Come join us Sat 31st Oct, 10am-5pm. You won’t go home empty handed 😉 little goodie bag for the first 50 visitors 🤩💚

‘Cornflower’
From the Book of Flower Studies created around 1510-1515 by
The Master of Claude de France
Botanical illustrations by this French Renaissance artist
Illuminated Manuscript
@helen_warlow
#Art

They’re so ridiculously photogenic.

Found another clump of lovely fluted birds nest fungi this morning.

Gorgeous photos from a very real human photographer.

Outrageous that X has labelled them 'Made with AI'

#photography

FAB photos of a Common Carder #bumblebee nest after the colony has come to the end of its life.

Common Carders usually nest at ground level, so interesting to see the remains of this nest in a bird box.

Thank you Andy @Muttley1968A for sharing these pics!

Bumblebees don't collect their own nesting material, by the way... but always make use of pre-existing abandoned nests. At ground level the nest would usually have been created by a rodent, but some bumblebee species use old bird nests.

Another clip of the #Dipper I saw this week on the little stream that runs through our village.

Taken through railings, but if you look carefully you can see he's been ringed! Hopefully (if I get better footage) this means someone can tell me exactly where he/she came from...