Stunning show of aurora in the Isles of Scilly last night - amazing to see these so bright and visible to the naked eye off the southwest coast! #aurora
20.01.2026 20:36
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Stunning show of aurora in the Isles of Scilly last night - amazing to see these so bright and visible to the naked eye off the southwest coast! #aurora
Pi the humpback spending her sixth winter with us here on Scilly - I flew the drone out to catch this video of her 800m offshore to the north of St Martin’s yesterday #whale #scilly
It never ceases to amaze me what poor custodians of the countryside some farmers can be - this is two sections of the River Smite a mile apart - one with trees and shrubs and habitat, the other stripped bare with zero standoff from the intensively sprayed monoculture and the watercourse
This felt like coming across a green portal into a different woodland…
Came across this quite incredible oak tucked away in a linear copse today - it had fallen years ago but not severed its stem - subsequently it has put on abundant growth in its new orientation and looks to have many years ahead!
Silver birches hiding out amongst the pines in Rendlesham Forest…
Staverton Thicks is a pretty perfect woodland to explore on Halloween - these beautiful gnarled old oaks and holly have ghoulish faces galore!
A full-sized Least Adder’s Tongue fern with a hawkbit flower for scale! Wingletang Down, St Agnes, Scilly @bsbibotany.bsky.social
Finally caught up with Least Adder’s Tongue on Wingletang, St Agnes. This tiny fern is only known in the UK from Scilly and Guernsey - there were around 9 fruiting plants in a tiny colony of around 70!
Clouded yellow on St Agnes, Isles of Scilly this afternoon
I thought this was a honey bee swarm at a distance but it’s the tree itself - I think this looks like a witches broom growth on this pine though I’ve never seen one quite like this before!
I came across two large conehead crickets yesterday - one on Bryher and one on Tresco in the Isles of Scilly - alongside several stridulating individuals on both St Martin’s and Bryher this summer, perhaps this suggests we have a breeding population on the islands now!
The tiniest common blue on Bryher, Scilly yesterday
You got me - long time listener, first time subscriber! I think podcasts always having been free means you need to examine those long held expectations and I’d imagine a lot of listeners would need that nudge to consider - I was so pleased to hear you back & hope Hyperfixed will run long and wild!
explaining scary things in the news to your elected leaders
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...
Our endemic Scilly Pearl #apples are ripe around a week earlier than usual - they’re delicious with a balanced sweetness and acidity but don’t keep long at all - today is spent bottling the juice we pressed yesterday with cider beginning to bubble too…
A distinctive sound caught my ear walking home at the weekend - a little searching in the bracken and found this handsome large conehead calling! These were first recorded in the UK here on the Isles of Scilly in 2003 as a rare vagrant species from Europe but appear to be spreading northwards now
Listening to Robin Wall Kimmerer’s narrated essay in @emergencemagazine.bsky.social was perfectly timed - face to face with the vines to see what each plant needs, I can imagine the flow of carbon and oxygen between us in this brief moment of tending emergencemagazine.org/essay/becomi...
The grass here on the vineyard is incredibly dry after so little rain, but is nonetheless alive with the hum of grasshoppers and splashes of colour from common blue and small copper butterflies
Common centaury flowering between the vines here on St Martin’s (late for #wildflowerhour!)
Spotted my first cricket nymph of the year on the cat’s ears between the vines today!
Yep - I think the instability and extreme weather will be a far bigger problem for the industry too over time, enough to offset the marginal increase in suitability in the good years!
@georgemonbiot.bsky.social hi George - I heard you might be in our neck of the woods! On the offchance you are, and would fancy stopping by to chat or try a wine/cider/beer/apple juice all made right here on the vineyard, we’d love to show you what we’re doing! Www.stmartinsvineyard.co.uk
Planting new vines today with the buzz of bees, call of birdsong and flit of common blue butterflies for company
Late for the #pinkfamily challenge but here are a couple of small-flowered catchfly between the vines on St Martin’s - not a common species on the mainland but still thriving here on Scilly! #wildflowerhour
Buff-tailed bumblebee worker enjoying the native bluebells which line the shadier edges of the vineyard on St Martin’s
Lovely to see the first common blues of the year out nectaring on the trefoils around the vineyard this morning
Home-made planting pouches - made from hessian sack to help green up our brand new pond with cuttings of water mint and water speedwell as well as crowfoot, curled pondweed and hornwort from a local pond
One of the most cynical bits of greenwashing I’ve ever seen - the idea that a factory farmed chicken can ‘thrive’ with such paltry concessions to welfare shows such a diminished, impoverished view of non-human lives that it’s straight up insulting
Sea kale - Crambe maritima - flowering at Old Town beach on St Mary’s, Isles of Scilly. Picked sparingly, the leaves are delicious!
