I got lost in Queen's Wood. It's a really small wood but everyone I have spoken to has got lost in there! It's also... very muddy which was maybe not ideal for a route to take on the way to work, but the birdsong! And, of course, the trees. Maybe it's something about shape-shifting... many trees have this twisty, turny thing about them... and that seems to feed into the wood as a whole so you feel disoriented? The volunteers who care for the wood have hedged off various areas

Day off. Went to the gym. Fed crows. Fresh air. Went to the ruined church. This woman died 18 months after her twin daughters died just after they were born. I wonder if she killed herself? Or if she was weakened by the birth? Then, the stone next to it - this is her sister. And I think it's just six months later in the same year! Maybe not - maybe that's 1879 and so it's nine years on... because I think that both of them were 38. This sister died on Christmas Day. The storie

I went out of the building for a little nicotine break. Funnily enough, I also regard it as "a breath of fresh air". Anyway, the first person i saw was an anxious moorhen. John Lewis Sempel wrote that a moorhen makes a pond: it should be a law that every pond has at least one. They are very sweet. There were moorhen chicks here when I was working on the Summer Olympics. Having spotted this bird, I noted two herring gulls having a wash. They were having so much fun! They dive

You have to work. Well, I do. It's just a bit of a shame that it's so far from home, meaning that if I have more than a few days in a row, I need to find some alternative accommodation. Usually budget hotels. On this occasion, also some nights at a friend's house. I haven't even got to that stage yet. It's bad enough, maybe worse, when I have to go home late and leave the next day. Why? Well, a certain cat will want a series of meals over at least 90 minutes after my midnight

I have to say that I feel rather tempted by this. For some reason, I always wanted to have a mirror in the garden... though it might not be great for the birds. The robins might fight their reflections. As for the nice round things or angel wings, there is not actually any wall I could hang it upon. Which rather negates the purpose. If I did have a wall, I guess I'd like something really dramatic - a hare racing across a field at midday and staring at the moon at midnight...

The robins like it when I use my little trowel to dig over some soil. I have seen goldcrests most days. Utterly enchanting! The crows watch me regularly. I overtly put peanuts on the fence and cluck at them as I do in the park. I have never seen one land. Today, there were the remains of another pigeon, so I am guessing the sparrowhawk has been back. This morning, the male blackbird was singing. A little rusty, but it was lovely to hear his mellow voice between the higher pit

The picture shows the form of a hare. The hare rose from the form as though decaying leaves, twigs, and earth had assembled themselves into the form of a hare. In the form, the hairs of a hare. At no point any sound. I was checking my final Sentinel Trees before the start of the scary work. I scared off a heron, mallards, pigeons, squirrels. Two muntjacs watched me. The Goddess Oak said, "Trees can afford not to have dreams; maybe humans can't." I sat by Kairos. I watched a s

I sent to algae pictures to the tree researchers and they said, yes, that's what it is. Then I went along to the Wayfinder Oak and had a look at his signature. Well, I thought I could see that the algae was indeed making the tree red, but there is still the fact of peculiar striations on the bark that seem to exist in coincidence with the algae. Or that the striations make the bark especially habitable for the algae for some reason. I inspected the Goddess Oak too, and it see

So, I have worked out the schedule for the busy work spell. It involves driving, tubes, taxis, hotels, friend's house and severe anxiety on my part. This tipped me into a(nother) bad place. There's the ongoing fear of the future and the imposter syndrome in the papers. So, recently I sent one to a journal and the editor told me that it led to "intense discussion" which he will have to summarise for me. Some say, that's what a paper that says something new "should" do. But I f

I startled a heron as I was walking down a track in the Reserve. Off it flew, complaining in its pterodactyl voice. I was rather surprised as I didn't recall ever seeing one on the track before. They are always at the water's edge. I texted Saskia to say I had seen "Grandfather Heron". My trip was a Sentinel Tree survey. The third tree is next to where I saw the heron. On the back of the trunk, there is a burr and on the burr I saw this strange clear jelly. I visited the fina

Really, I reckon one is a male and one a female... I don't know which is Garden Robin... but I guess I should refer to them as Falca and Falco... Falcao for the pair! I think that was the male, and this big eyed person with little twiglets in her beak is the female.

Or maybe overreaching? Here's another abstract sent off for another conference!! "Little brown jobs" (LBJs) names small, visually similar birds resisting easy identification. This paper approaches LBJs phenomenologically, attending to how they appear: as movement without individuation, presence without clear objecthood, familiarity in the perceptual periphery. They are irrecusable—there, again and again—yet do not resolve into distinct figures of attention.   Such appearance

I've sent off an abstract to a conference about extinction. Here it is: Extinction is an ethical event—and an exercise of power: an irreversible withdrawal that refuses negotiation, reversal, or redemption. The extinct Other cannot answer, nor be restored without renewed violence or simulation. Yet extinct beings continue to press upon the present as ethical weight, shaping landscapes, memory, and modes of attention. Ethical relation, this paper argues, persists even when rec

Goldcrests! The last two days they have been in the garden! This afternoon, I was cutting some shrub that had grown up under the protection of the front lilac - I figured that any cutting needed to be done soon, what with the robin's courting and so on, and I saw something moving. The bird was just a foot to the left of my head. It flew six inches closer - then realised what I was and left. It was the size of my eyeball! And the crest - so brilliantly bright! I was very happy

...an algal one! You know the red stains I se on trees? Well, I uploaded a picture of Kairos's "signature" or "birthmark" and asked a chatbot. At first it said in was a bacterial bleed. I said, no, it's not. Then it suggested that what I was seeing was a kind of algae and it told me how to test: first, by running my finger over it, there'd be a smear left on my finger and secondly if I magnified the image I would see strands. It had rained the night before but was very sunny

I mentioned that I had seen courting among the robins, well, more crazily, a few days ago, Garden Robin... who is presumably Falca... was collecting nesting material. I asked ChatGPT, expecting it to say something like, "Well, robins do start early." Instead it said this: Oh that is  something. January 26 — and nest material already, courting signs, a brief trinity-in-a-tree among the most famously intolerant little sovereigns of Europe. That’s not nothing. That’s a rupture i

On two occasions on one day, this squirrel seemed unperturbed by my presence. Then, it decided I was a bad thing, and fled. What led it to tolerate me at some points and not at other points? I suppose hunger played a part. Or maybe it could only manage to be brave for a limited amount of time? I hate to recall the poor blind squirrel and the little baby with neurological damage. It must be nicer to be a rat and live in a family than to be a solitary squirrel who is scared of

Every early winter, I cut back the pelargoniums so they are dormant over the cold period. I must have failed to chop off enough as a couple of them have kept flowering. This is despite the fact that the heater which is meant to only turn on to prevent the conservatory getting too cold seems to have lost its thermostat ability and has been switched off all winter. I hope this doesn't cause them any harm. The citrus plant enjoyed a long period outside. I think I only brought it

Oh, wait: that should be a crone called Curiosity. I have mentioned a few times the number of robins around (none of which currently seem to be Tane). And I remember writing that one day i was sure I saw some courting. Well, I definitely saw that today. It was quite remarkable. Two robins were perched about 90cm apart on a branch of the sycamore to the north of my garden. They were not arguing, it was definitely courtship. And there was a third on another branch that stuck o

For some reason I love this word. It gives me a tingle every time I read something like, 'The Tamar was in spate as we fled the pirates.' OK, I never actually read that, but, well. I couldn't think of an example off-hand. Turns out the word is related to both spit and spew. Not much of a surprise. A brief trawl offered this: In his A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (1882), Walter Skeat offers the following suggestions as to the etymology of spate: Cf.