David Higgins
@davidhiggins
Professor of Environmental Humanities at the University of Leeds, UK. Working on culture and environmental crisis. Writing a book about birds, loss, and restoration. Worried parent. Luddite. Opinions my own. Reposts ≠ endorsement.
This is a new plant for me — my phone app thinks that it is tall melilot. I rather like it and wish I’d taken a better photo! Seen at RSPB St Aidan’s, West Yorkshire. #wildflowerhour
This morning, in West Yorkshire, I saw three glossy ibis, assorted egrets (cattle, great white, little), and spoonbills. (Also a bittern for about one second 👍) It's pretty amazing, and also a bit scary, to see our avifauna changing as the climate does. #UKbirding
Yesterday the street WhatsApp group exploded due to political disagreements. Someone else started a new and nicer group. I don’t want to kick things off again so soon, but the provocation is severe…
A moment of calm this morning. Took my son to football camp and, en route home, watched swallows and house martins circuiting low over the playing fields. All I could hear, for a moment or two, was the wind through the trees and the birds’ high-pitched calls.
Rosebay willowherb and a photobombing insect (honey bee?), West Yorkshire #wildflowerhour
Today I think I’ve finally recovered from the weekend, which I spent in Brighton for a uni reunion. Among other activities, we were out late at a magnificent alternative 80s club night DJed by @simonprice.bsky.social. I’ve always been a Dad Dancer and am now at the perfect age to lean into it….
Up early today in search of Honey Buzzards and Turtle Doves. Didn’t find either, but saw many butterflies (of c15 species) including my first Silver-Washed Fritillary and Marbled White. Birding highlight two Willow Tits at Wykeham Forest.
Found a cool fly while my son was at football training. My phone thinks it is a marsh snipefly (Rhagio tringarius).
This from a very popular podcast. Honestly, can people really be falling for this arrant nonsense!? “Ooh I’ve added 400 points to my IQ”! Utterly ridiculous.
Somewhere around Sheffield Cathedral today was a black redstart. The song was faint beneath the sounds of bells, boozers, traffic, and the wind. I probably would have missed it if it hadn’t already been reported. Saw a small bird a couple of times but couldn’t get a definitive view…..
Can anyone confirm from this terrible photo whether or not this is a painted lady?
Fucking hell this book is depressing. And I say that as someone who researches ecological/philosophical pessimism. Certainly a book to be judged by its cover.
Did not expect to see a tawny owl or hear a quail at my local patch this morning, but that is the joy of birding! 28 other species, including singing yellowhammers and swallows.
My Midsummer tradition is that I I look at my neighbours’ billiard-table front lawns, say to myself (grudgingly) “I suppose I should get the mower out”, start mowing, find a load of grasshoppers that I don’t want to harm, give up, and go and do something more worthwhile.
Made a little pond last year and planted some wildflowers. Ox-eye daisies have done particularly well. Hoverflies are enjoying them!
A rare night out to see Belle and Sebastian and Saint Etienne in Halifax. Lovely evening for an outdoor gig. Great black-backed gull and peregrine falcon also supporting. (And thanks to my mother-in-law for babysitting!)
24°C in Leeds. I have felt obliged to wear a garish holiday-style shirt to work.
Nightjar churring at Stainburn Forest yesterday evening. Decent if brief views. Also tree pipits, roding woodcocks, and various warblers. Highlight was a magnificent short-eared owl hunting over grassland and catching voles.
Been feeling in the doldrums recently. Am hoping a twilight excursion to find nightjars will rouse me. Two crucial items of equipment below…
The invasive box tree moth has arrived in Adel with a bang this year — I don’t think there’s any healthy box left in the area. Culprit in the middle of the photo, taken in my garden.
Woke up early and was faced with a decision*: should I mark another dissertation or head out to look for nightingales and turtle doves? *not a hard one
Visited Marston Vale in Bedfordshire for the first time today, to interview an expert on bitterns and wetland conservation. We sat outside at the café, looking out at this reed bed. Twice the interview was interrupted by a close bittern fly-by, which I’m interpreting as a Good Omen for my book.
To cut a long story short, at 7 this morning I found myself hacking through nettles, holly, and brambles in search of a lost Pikachu, who was none the worse for his overnight adventure.
Bought this book at Wicken Fen last week. It is super interesting on the expropriation of the commons by the wealthy and also on concerted resistance to the enclosure and draining of the English fens over centuries.
My daughter’s latest masterpiece: ‘This Book is Crassy! [Crazy]’. Green dinosaur and purple unicorn cavorting on the cover. Mayhem within, including a weird monster swallowing the word ‘crassy’. 3/10 for spelling. 10/10 for creativity.
This is a Greater Honeyguide. Like a cuckoo, it lays its eggs in the nests of other species, often destroying the host’s eggs in the process. If any of the host’s chicks hatch, the honeyguide chicks, still blind and featherless, will PECK THEM TO DEATH. Nature is murder (to paraphrase W Herzog).
Visited some John Clare haunts on my way from Suffolk to Yorkshire. Heard a cuckoo in Rice Wood and a nightingale at Swaddywell! (The latter lamented by Clare as an overextracted landscape but now a nature reserve.) Then my luck ran out and I sat in a traffic jam on the A1 for three hours…