#Curlew Lake

[dansnaturepictures]

Ten of my favourite photos taken in January 2023 and month summary 

1. Bewick’s Swan at WWT Slimbridge, Gloucestershire 

2. Nene aka Hawaiian Goose at WWT Slimbridge 

3. Curlew at Lymington, Hampshire

4. Kingfisher at Winnall Moors in Hampshire

5. Winter heliotrope at Lakeside Country Park in Hampshire 

6. Weston Shore, Hampshire 

7. Tar Lakes in Oxfordshire 

8. Milkham in the New Forest 

9. Sunset at home 

10. Frozen lake at Lakeside 

What a start to the year I have had for wildlife watching and photos. It was another fantastic start to my birdwatching year with the sheer volume of species we saw, allowing me to have my fastest ever start to my year list being the highest amount of bird species I have ever seen after one month of a year and ahead of what all my other year lists were on at given points on most days. It was a joyful process to lay the foundations of my year list once again seeing so much, with a thrilling mix of trips to wonderful places on our week off to start the year, working day walks and weekend trips making it a unique start to my birdwatching year allowing us to see many sensational species, many so well and a fair few multiple times from Purple Sandpiper to Green Woodpecker and many more in between. Scaup, my first ever Sabine’s Gull, a fair few Goldeneye and Kingfisher seen, Short-eared Owl, Glossy Ibis, Slavonian Grebe and unexpected Kittiwake are some of many other top species seen this month. 

It has been a brilliant start to my mammal year too especially deers and especially Roe Deers with many seen. I even managed to see an unidentified butterfly during it all with spiders continuing to shine throughout the month for me at home. It was a great month of flowers even if not too many were around with some seasonal delights which I so enjoyed seeing and some seen that will come to the fore in weeks to come as I enjoyed seeing plants and fungi too generally. I took in so many beautiful landscapes and sky scenes in different parts of the country in many brilliant bits of sunny weather, with frost and ice as well as dramatic bare tree scenes, the wet landscape with the amount of rain too and gorgeous seasonal light bringing that winter flavour to the month. I am happy to have taken so many photos this month including many I am pleased with. I hope you all have a good February.

[cryptidclaw]

Cryptidclaw's WC Prefixes List!

Yall said you were interested in seeing it so here it is! 

This is a collection of mostly Flora, Fauna, Rocks, and other such things that can be found in Britain since that’s where the books take place! 

I also have other Prefixes that have to do with pelt colors and patterns as well!

Here’s a link to the doc if you dont want to expand a 650 word list on your Tumblr feed lol! the doc is also in my drive linked in my pined post!

below is the actual list! If there are any names you think I should add plz tell me!

EDIT: I will update the doc with new names as I come up with them or have them suggested to me, but I wont update the list on this post! Plz visit my doc for a more updated version!

Animals

Mammal

Badger

Bat

Bear

Beaver

Bison

Boar

Buck

Calf

Cow

Deer

Elk

Fawn

Ferret

Fox

Goat

Hare

Horse

Lamb

Lynx

Marten

Mole

Mouse

Otter

Rabbit

Rat

Seal

Sheep

Shrew

Squirrel

Stoat

Vole

Weasel

Wolf

Wolverine

Amphibians

Frog

Newt

Toad

Reptiles

Scale

Adder

Lizard

Snake

Turtle

Shell

Birds

Bird

Down

Feather

Albatross

Bittern

Buzzard

Chaffinch

Chick

Chicken

Coot

Cormorant

Corvid

Crane

Crow

Curlew

Dove

Duck

Dunlin

Eagle

Egret

Falcon

Finch

Gannet

Goose

Grouse

Gull

Hawk

Hen

Heron

Ibis

Jackdaw

Jay

Kestrel

Kite

Lark

Magpie

Mallard

Merlin

Mockingbird

Murrelet

Nightingale

Osprey

Owl

Partridge

Pelican

Peregrine

Petrel

Pheasant

Pigeon

Plover

Puffin

Quail

Raven

Robin

Rook

Rooster

Ruff

Shrike

Snipe

Sparrow

Starling

Stork

Swallow

Swan

Swift

Tern

Thrasher

Thrush

Vulture

Warbler

Whimbrel

Wren

Freshwater Fish 

Fish

Bass

Bream 

Carp

Dace

Eel

Lamprey

Loach

Minnow

Perch

Pike

Rudd

Salmon

Sterlet

Tench

Trout

Roach

Saltwater fish and other Sea creatures (would cats be able to find some of these? Probably not, I don't care tho)

Alge

Barnacle

Bass (Saltwater version)

Bream (Saltwater version)

Brill

Clam

Cod

Crab

Dolphin

Eel (Saltwater version)

Flounder

Garfish

Halibut

Kelp

Lobster

Mackerel

Mollusk

Orca

Prawn

Ray

Seal

Shark

Shrimp

Starfish

Sting

Urchin

Whale

Insects and Arachnids

Honey

Insect

Web

Ant

Bee

Beetle

Bug

Butterfly

Caterpillar

Cricket

Damselfly

Dragonfly

Fly

Grasshopper

Grub

Hornet

Maggot

Moth

Spider

Wasp

Worm

Trees

Acorn

Bark

Branch

Forest

Hollow

Log

Root

Stump

Timber

Tree

Twig

Wood

Alder

Apple

Ash

Aspen

Beech

Birch

Cedar

Cherry

Chestnut

Cypress

Elm

Fir

Hawthorn

Hazel

Hemlock

Linden

Maple

Oak

Pear

Poplar

Rowan

Redwood

Spruce

Willow

Yew

Flowers, Shrubs and Other plants

Berry

Blossom

Briar

Field

Flower

Leaf

Meadow

Needle

Petal

Shrub

Stem

Thicket

Thorn

Vine

Anemone 

Apricot

Barley 

Bellflower

Bluebell

Borage

Bracken

Bramble

Briar

Burnet

Buttercup

Campion

Chamomile

Chanterelle

Chicory

Clover

Cornflower

Daffodil

Daisy

Dandelion

Dogwood

Fallow

Fennel

Fern

Flax

Foxglove

Furze

Garlic

Ginger

Gorse

Grass

Hay

Heather

Holly

Honeysuckle

Hop

Hyacinth

Iris

Ivy

Juniper

Lavender

Lichen

Lilac

Lilly

Mallow

Marigold

Mint

Mistletoe

Moss

Moss

Mushroom

Nettle

Nightshade

Oat

Olive

Orchid

Parsley

Periwinkle

Pine

Poppy

Primrose

Privet

Raspberry

Reed

Reedmace

Rose

Rush

Rye

Saffron

Sage

Sedge

Seed

Snowdrop

Spindle

Strawberry

Tangerine

Tansy

Teasel

Thistle

Thrift

Thyme

Violet

Weed

Wheat

Woodruff

Yarrow

Rocks and earth

Agate

Amber

Amethyst

Arch

Basalt

Bounder

Cave

Chalk

Coal

Copper

Dirt

Dust

Flint

Garnet

Gold

Granite

Hill

Iron

Jagged

Jet

Mountain

Mud

Peak

Pebble

Pinnacle

Pit

Quartz

Ridge

Rock

Rubble

Ruby

Rust(y)

Sand

Sapphire

Sediment

Silt

Silver

Slate

Soil

Spire

Stone

Trench

Zircon

Water Formations

Bay

Cove

Creek

Delta

Lake

Marsh

Ocean

Pool

Puddle

River

Sea

Water

Weather and such

Autumn

Avalanche

Balmy

Blaze

Blizzard

Breeze

Burnt

Chill

Cinder

Cloud

Cold

Dew

Drift

Drizzle

Drought

Dry

Ember

Fall

Fire

Flame

Flood

Fog

Freeze

Frost

Frozen

Gale

Gust

Hail

Ice

Icicle

Lightening

Mist

Muggy

Rain 

Scorch

Singe

Sky

Sleet

Sloe

Smoke

Snow

Snowflake

Soot

Sorrel

Spark

Spring

Steam

Storm

Summer

Sun

Thunder

Water

Wave

Wet

Wind

Winter

Celestial??

Comet

Dawn

Dusk

Evening 

Midnight

Moon

Morning

Night

Noon

Twilight

Cat Features, Traits, and Misc. 

Azure

Beige

Big

Black

Blonde

Blotch(ed)

Blue

Bounce

Bright 

Brindle

Broken

Bronze

Brown

Bumble

Burgundy

Call

Carmine

Claw

Cobalt

Cream

Crimson

Cry

Curl(y)

Dapple

Dark

Dot(ted)

Dusky

Ebony

Echo

Fallen

Fleck(ed)

Fluffy

Freckle

Ginger

Golden

Gray

Green

Heavy

Kink

Knot(ted)

Light

Little

Lost

Loud

Marbled

Mew

Milk

Mottle

Mumble

Ochre

Odd

One

Orange

Pale

Patch(ed)

Pounce 

Prickle

Ragged

Red

Ripple

Rough

Rugged

Russet

Scarlet

Shade

Shaggy

Sharp

Shimmer

Shining

Small

Smudge

Soft

Song

Speckle

Spike

Splash

Spot(ted)

Streak

Stripe(d)

Strong

Stump(y)

Sweet

Tall

Talon

Tangle

Tatter(ed)

Tawny

Tiny

Tough

Tumble

Twist

Violet

Whisker

Whisper

White

Wild

Wooly

Yellow

[awc-fixit]

AWC: Prey (LT)

In the world of clan-life, cats need food; and the only way they can provide for their clanmates is by hunting down small animals.

In my rewrite, the clans have different unique ways of hunting, and they also have prey exclusive to their clan only. The only way to get clan-exclusive prey is by trading.

In here, I will be listing off all the different kinds of prey in the lake territories! A list for the forest territories will be made soon !! ^^

WindClan

1. Hares

2. Rabbits

3. Moor Grouse

4. Curlew

5. Lapwing

6. Voles

7. Mice

8. Adders & Lizards

ShadowClan

1. Frogs, toads, etc. etc. Basically any amphibian that isn't poisonous to cats.

2. Squirrels

3. Rats (rats aren't actually unhealthy; the ones from the forest territories are though, considering they mostly live in the carrionplace)

4. Grubs (ShadowClan cats aren't picky-eaters.)

5. Dead predators (ShadowClan cats aren't picky eaters.)

6. Lizards

7. Snakes & Adders

8. Turtles (rarely)

9. Snails (rarely; since they taste bad)

ThunderClan

1. Mice

2. Squirrels

3. Woodpeckers, Cardinals, Sparrows, Swallows, Robin, etc.

4. Cardinals

5. Chipmunks

6. Bats

7. Mallard ducks

RiverClan

1. Frogs

2. Carp, trout, salmon, perch, pike, and minnows.

3. Squirrels

4. Water voles

5. Mice

6. Turtles

7. Ducks

8. Lapwings & Plovers

9. Shrews (as well as Water shrews)

SkyClan (trees)

1. Squirrels

2. Chipmunks

3. Woodpeckers

4. Cardinals

5. Sparrows

6. Crows

7. Robins

8. Bats (rarely)

9. Finches

10. Wood thrush

11. Swallows

12. Eggs

SkyClan (ground)

1. Mice

2. Squirrels

3. Grubs

4. Weasels

5. Earthworms

[bonefall]

Do you think they could boil eggs?

Easily! VERY easily. But it may not be done all too often because eggs would be quite valuable. It's a pivotal binding agent for cooking. Dough, meatloaf, kibble…

They don't have access to an egg-laying domestic bird like a chicken, so they would have to forage wild eggs. On top of it, they would want to avoid taking the eggs of vulnerable species like curlews and songbirds to keep their numbers high.

ShadowClan would actually have access to a lot of eggs in the Lake Territory, because pine forests are home to a lot of birds and insects, with fewer mammals than deciduous forest. RiverClan's ducks and swans would also give them lots to work with; which could be shared by RiverClan's marshes.

Egg-centric dishes would be deeeelicious, like deviled eggs, "egg salad" with chopped fish, omelettes, egg drop soup.... mmgh. I'll add an egg entry to the to-do list.

[ch0cocrave]

gah…hello fellow bird fan!!!!!!! good places to birdwatch????? i wanna say specific locations bjt i dint wanna reveal where i live hjhdhshshhd so just in general!!! ^_^ traveling is nice anyway so maybe one more thing to do if its somewhere i could go!! ( < probs wont travel until like 4 years from now)

im scared of people spotting this wveryone thinks im dead im just grounded

HAIIIIIIII HELLOOOOO!!!! :PPPP

Hmmmm good places to birdwatch huh???

My mom told me a while ago that the great salt lake is a great place to look for TONS and I mean TONS of migratory birds that fly through there every fall! [ kinda like in September-October ] You could see American Avocets, Long-billed curlews, Black necked stilts, cute little sandpipers, phalaropes, and yellowlegs! + many more including pelicans! >:]

Its also pretty fun to look around in any marshes you have that might be local to you! There could be herons, [ when i went with a group this spring we called a Virginia Rail AND IT CAME UP TO THE SPEAKER BRUSHNEJHBD XD- ] and also ducks or bitterns! [ one of my favs lmao they are just so cute and AUUGHGHHHH ]

Some more popular places among birders are The Everglades National Park in Florida, Point Reyes Seashore in Northern California, Lake Nakuru in Kenya, and one of my absolute favs the Daintree Rainforest in the Amazon located in Brazil!

There's also some books you could get that could help with naming the species maybe like a guidbook/handbook with the species that are more native to where you're from! ^^

[warriors-rewritten-chaos]

Warrior Cats Prefixes- W

I had a WC Name Generator on Perchance that I made but I don't seem to have access anymore, so I'm remaking it here as just a simple list. The definitions used are the ones that Clan cats have for those things, and thus are the origins of the names. Definitions used are whatever I found when I googled it.

Wagtail-: "[noun] any of various chiefly Old World oscine birds (family Motacillidae) related to the pipits and having a long tail that they habitually jerk up and down"

Walnut-: "[noun] the large wrinkled edible seed of a deciduous tree, consisting of two halves contained within a hard shell which is enclosed in a green fruit; [noun] he tall tree that produces the walnut, with compound leaves and valuable ornamental timber"

Wander-: "[verb] walk or move in a leisurely, casual, or aimless way; [noun] an act or instance of wandering"

Warble-: "[verb] (of a bird) sing softly and with a succession of constantly changing notes; [noun] a warbling sound or utterance"

Warbler-: "[noun] any of a number of small insectivorous songbirds that typically have a warbling song"

Warm-: "[adj] of or at a fairly or comfortably high temperature; [adj] having, showing, or expressive of enthusiasm, affection, or kindness"

Wasp-: "[noun] a social winged insect that has a narrow waist and a sting. It constructs a paper nest from wood pulp and raises the larvae on a diet of insects; [noun] a solitary winged insect with a narrow waist, mostly distantly related to the social wasps and including many parasitic kinds"

Water-: "[noun] a colorless, transparent, odorless liquid that forms the seas, lakes, rivers, and rain"

Wave-: "[noun] a long body of water curling into an arched form and breaking on the shore; [verb] move one's tail or paw to and fro in greeting or as a signal"

Wavy-: "[adj] having a form or edge that smoothly curves in and out"

Wax-: "[noun] a sticky yellowish moldable substance secreted by honeybees as the material of honeycomb, aka beeswax"

Waxcap-: "[noun] a species of fungi that are often brightly-coloured with a waxy or slippery-looking cap"

Weasel-: "[noun] a small, slender, carnivorous mammal related to, but generally smaller than, the stoat"

Web-: "[noun] a network of fine threads constructed by a spider from fluid secreted by its spinnerets, used to catch its prey"

Webcap-: "[noun] a mushroom of the agaric genus Cortinarius, many of which are highly poisonous"

Weed-: "[noun] a wild plant growing where it is not wanted and in competition with cultivated plants"

Weeping-: "[adj] shedding tears; [adj] used in names of tree and shrub varieties with drooping branches"

Weevil-: "[noun] a small beetle with an elongated snout, the larvae of which typically develop inside seeds, stems, or other plant parts"

Wet-: "[adj] covered or saturated with water or another liquid"

Wheat-: "[noun] a cereal plant that is the most important kind grown in temperate countries; [noun] the grain of the wheat plant"

Whimbrel-: "[noun] a small migratory curlew of northern Eurasia and northern Canada, with a striped crown and a trilling call"

Whirl-: "[verb] move or cause to move rapidly around and around; [noun] a rapid movement around and around"

Whirling-: "[adj] characterized by rapid movement round and round"

Whisper-: "[verb] speak very softly using one's breath without one's vocal cords"

Whispering-: "[verb] speak very softly using one's breath without one's vocal cords, especially for the sake of privacy"

Whistle-: "[verb] to make a shrill clear sound especially by rapid movement"

Whistling-: "[verb] emit a clear, high-pitched sound; [verb] (especially of a bird) produce a clear, high-pitched sound"

White-: "[adj] of the color of milk or fresh snow, due to the reflection of most wavelengths of visible light; [noun] white color or pigment"

Whorl-: "[noun] a pattern of spirals or concentric circles; [verb] spiral or move in a twisted and convoluted fashion"

Wigeon-: "[noun] a dabbling duck with mainly reddish-brown and gray plumage, the male having a whistling call"

Wild-: "[adj] (of an animal or plant) living or growing in the natural environment"

Willow-: "[noun] a tree or shrub of temperate climates that typically has narrow leaves, bears catkins, and grows near water"

Wilting-: "[verb] (of a plant, leaf, or flower) become limp through heat, loss of water, or disease. Droop; [verb] (of a cat) lose one's energy or vigor"

Wind-: "[noun] the perceptible natural movement of the air, especially in the form of a current of air blowing from a particular direction"

Windy-: "[adj] (of weather, a period of time, or a place) marked by or exposed to strong winds"

Wish-: "[verb] feel or express a strong desire or hope for something that is not easily attainable, or to want something that cannot or probably will not happen"

Wisp-: "[noun] a small thin or twisted bunch, piece, or amount of something"

Wisteria-: "[noun] a climbing shrub of the pea family, with hanging clusters of pale bluish-lilac flowers"

Wolf-: "[noun] a wild carnivorous mammal of the dog family, living and hunting in packs"

Wolverine-: "[noun] a heavily built short-legged carnivorous mammal with a shaggy dark coat and a bushy tail"

Wonder-: "[noun] a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable; [verb] desire or be curious to know something"

Wood-: "[noun] the hard fibrous material that forms the main substance of the trunk or branches of a tree or shrub; [noun] an area of land, smaller than a forest, that is covered with growing trees"

Woodpecker-: "[noun] a bird with a strong bill and a stiff tail, which climbs tree trunks to find insects and drums on dead wood to mark territory"

Woodruff-: "[noun] a white-flowered plant of the bedstraw family with whorled leaves, smelling of new-mown hay when dried or crushed"

Wool-: "[noun] the fine, soft curly or wavy hair forming the coat of a sheep, goat, or similar animal"

Woolly: "[adj] made of wool or looking like wool"

Worm-: "[noun] any of a number of creeping or burrowing invertebrate animals with long, slender soft bodies and no limbs"

Wren-: "[noun] a small short-winged songbird"

[speedyz3]

I spotted this Long Billed Curlew at the overlook on Antelope Island. Normally you see then closer to the water, but this one was taking in the view of the Great Salt Lake.

[victusinveritas]

Patrick Pearse spent much of the last summer of his life (1915) in Rosmuck, Connemara with his brother Willie and a friend named Desmond Ryan.

It was a relaxed holiday although Pearse found the time to write one of Ireland's most famous speeches - 'Ireland unfree shall never be at peace,' spoken at the graveside of O'Donovan Rossa and considered by many as a key moment in the lead up to the Easter Rising.

Ryan recalled the summer fondly:

"The next day we proceeded to Rosmuck by train, or rather part of the way, for Rosmuck lies nine miles from a railway station, and we had a long drive by side-car through granite and peat from Maam Cross Station over winding, peak-screened roads.

It was a stirring view along those serpentine roads, ever winding and twisting to avoid the bog.

The horse trotted bravely while an O’Malley drove, and Pearse explained what famous people the O’Malleys were in Connemara.

All the while, bluish granite mountains soared and all around spread the peat-bogs starred by the tiny lakes, each with a local name and every name known to Pearse, who declared for the hundredth time he could find his way blindfold on any road in Connacht.

The Twelve Bens came in sight and Pearse waved his hand here and there over the land, naming lake, mountain and district away to the Joyce Country under its purple mist.

He told us many stories he had learned from the people.

Away there on that gloomy mountain yonder a stranger had lived for years, coming suddenly in the night from nowhere, henceforth a hermit, perhaps doing a penance of solitude and silence for some deed of blood.

We passed a peculiar green building of corrugated iron, a Protestant Church, [Screebe?] and then Pearse remembered that many years before the Bible Societies had carried out a proselytising campaign, and even in 1915 a small remnant of the Irish-speaking Protestant colonies still survived.

Once on his rambles, Pearse had met one of the members, an old man up in a cottage among the hills who opened his Gaelic Bible, read it aloud and argued with Pearse for an hour until the old man’s daughter came in and told her father that he had no manners and that he did not know how to treat a learned man who knew enough Irish and enough Bible to make up his mind for himself, and the attempted conversion of Pearse went no further.

A lonely letter-box on a post at a crossroads led Pearse to tell of the extravagant family, long bankrupt and extinct, who had had the box erected as a monument to their exclusiveness, recklessness and pride.

A barracks rose beside the rattling wheels and Pearse knew that the sergeant within was a crusty and cantankerous fellow companioned by six splendid constables, enthusiastic Irish speakers who spent their time in shooting wild ducks, fishing and studying with zeal the poems of Eoghan Ruadh O’Sullivan.

The car stopped at the schoolmaster’s house and Patrick Connolly welcomed Pearse warmly. His wife came out too.

Inside like startled birds, the four daughters of the schoolmaster retreated from our gaze while their mother laughed and said they would grow out of all that, but when young people lived among lakes and bogs they became curlews and mountain birds, easily startled by wild young men from the cities and poets from Dublin, all this for Willie and me whose ties and locks must have startled her ducklings.

We proceeded to the cottage, a white, thatched, oblong building with green

door, porchway and two windows in front, approached by a peat-sodded path from the main road. Here was the spiritual home of Pearse, which in the last years he visited every summer to pay a last farewell.

Below lay a fifty-acre lake legend tenanted with a Water Horse.

Beyond the rare walls of the cottage, the Atlantic heaved and moaned with tales of lost ships or murmured a summons to ride on its bosom to the Aran Isles on a fair day.

On every side rose the purple hills and peat, agleam with unnumbered lakelets. Pearse sat at the kitchen table writing the closing tales in his book of short stories, 'The Mother.'

He turned aside to discuss the completed stories with Willie and me, and said he thought the best the grimmest one, a tale of a woman under a curse called the “Black Chafer.”

Then he sighed that he had never written a story about turf or shown up enough the

hard life of the people. He said this sadly with almost the air of a man who all at once comes upon an intolerable personal grievance.

Sometimes he went down and bathed in the lake while Willie guarded him from the banks with a long, strong rope as Pearse was no swimmer. This tickled the brothers so much that they gave up the attempt with loud merriment and mutual criticisms.

Returning, Pearse mused on his cottage and said that one of the builders had been an old man who took his task very slowly and seriously, making progress by inches, but consoling Pearse’s impatience with the sole remark:

“Won’t it be a fine house when it is finished. Indeed it will be a fine house when it is finished.”

Pearse was more outspoken than I had ever known him before.

Night by night he spoke to Willie and me about everything by turns.

Much about the future of the Irish language. Here in this self-contained community which he had once known as purely Irish-speaking, English was creeping in among the younger generation.

It amused him when we walked abroad in the day-time to speak to the men working

the land and smile at the English expressions speckling the Gaelic:

“Becripes, tá . . . bedamned but tá...' from those who knew no other words of English, but he said this was the beginning of the end unless some great change came.

And what the change would be sometimes broke through his thoughts...

Who could have guessed that behind his gentle words and look, an insurrection simmered, a certainty that his days were irrevocably numbered and in this place he would never see in another summer?"

Pictured above are Patrick Pearse and his brother Willie, neither of whom would live to see the summer of 1916.

Taken from Desmond Ryan's 1934 auto-biography 'Remembering Sion.'

All of this was taken whole cloth from The History of Connemara Facebook group.

[roadtrippinlilly]

Long-billed Curlew Resting at Quanah Parker Lake in the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge

Oct 9th 2023

[posterdrops]

Reposted @simonmarchner Death Cab For Cutie • European Tour 2023 | Screenprint || So happy I can finally reveal this: I did the official screenprinted tour poster for @deathcabforcutie ! I've been working with Death Cab on several projects for almost 5 years now and they are always super fun to work with.. I had full creative freedom with the design so I decided it Is time to bring in some curlews (ger. Brachvögel) in a full moon lake scenery to reflect their music. The design got screenprinted with 5 colours in a total edition of 650(!) prints. That got me into a total printing time of nearly 1 week to pull them through.. Thanks to Death Cab For Cutie for another great project, Brittany / @themerchcollective and @probitymerch for handling this and @lenisowiesophie for some help & behind the scene pics/videos.. The prints are available in a limited Artist Proof edition of 100 signed & numbered prints at my webstore now. Swipe to see some details.. #deathcabforcutie #dcfc https://www.instagram.com/p/CpfwZ4mO0B4/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[libidomechanica]

To our fairly diddled, till, wouldst use my Ear such sense,

A limerick sequence

               First Stanza

To our fairly diddled, till, wouldst use my Ear such sense, and caughter of skil    with power? Which now white,    per Centaur Nessus garment’s in truth, the most moist hand, the place?

               Second Stanza

Sprains, where it is there. Smile; and the bountied a kerchief, althought, aSTREA showe?    Will corresponds admit    impedimental apace, but a moments? The till the world?

               Third Stanza

Not only Friendship’s names in golden keys. Free of jet. He serious channels?    But now thou threw a    lake faire foot, more the sung; and feel, faintly sway down to published.

               Fourth Stanza

I said aside the dreamt a dog, a little without all arrive will her    places. My pure like task    grow, each was impressed your way. Thus, she articular figure.

               Fifth Stanza

That clouds all, and musing breast grow that they keep the faring and tell the Fawn    at you stands is, that harvest    thought turn’d th’ offence from whom cruel eyes, and the devise.

               Sixth Stanza

Submits haue the fashionable—not ever which yet I view my tears; the very    clear, that the small Jack    Horner, as young—I see these two. Both great lid, full-sloping death?

               Seventh Stanza

The grow above the concord be the other and to place, and that must starry    head. And my death her    modern quilly, what we seen may ill with the drunken by Sand.

               Eighth Stanza

But rest; but some slippers write me fine. Grows too find thine. A think up the wet    field, the reason, thy globe    of the touch of pleases to looks on every from the river.

               Ninth Stanza

Which loue, but will around. They saw and the curlews came on, and talk about    of that set. Death, and    increasing pride like what the Troop a Shrines! Of the enviable.

               Tenth Stanza

Thy azure’s nothings be, that the first retrace in verse’s, and you present    has last. Devoid of    Verses his tuned hall—jenny heart, for a need she’s miscreant!

               Eleventh Stanza

’ Most love their moone whom Lambrosial month of the wonder the rose. Trade, ’ like hand    tuneful Evening-sky, yet,    happy are nor revealing a cleft on the fuel of our neck.

               Twelfth Stanza

Merry, thy imagining with human of thy sigh the really is Heavens.    And chang’d, I am    draine. So love him—for his not touched his said: a Count Pleasaunt be.

               Thirteenth Stanza

Is they mighty wits dwelt in field of state and as if the turn out of reuerence    till the diseased to-    day. Lips were cologne. The eyelids up a Harp I strove,—guess brow!

               Fourteenth Stanza

The soule wa’; and snaw; but I could died. Need the twilight shin’d wave his. A time    you tyrants, by its    curiosity, living across. Rarity, and so truth it.

               Fifteenth Stanza

No one wherefore lean aspiracy of why I’m freedom. To there with    thy painted flows like the    mountaining buys for either sonnets, attention of the sea.

               Sixteenth Stanza

Unto the bride the drunken pour of all thing gainst the rustic fumes the led    the milk-teeth, for some dish.    Whence, and set trash of almost essentiment; i’m on the sea.

               Seventeenth Stanza

That field, and sway? Though is love, supporter; still without then the heaven, my    boys, choked subjects to bear    objects to rest! The unknown, all summer-time, I am man!

               Eighteenth Stanza

Please those a morning loving, all the changed: in a day, at all the night, and    blew in his never    paroxysm dream. Where those or two; and, a sudden, she’d just portion.

               Nineteenth Stanza

To man. I wish in the which, which in line; takes my fingers; other deed, and    years, throught, the moon’s kind    offerent: desire! Call in tender Friend being; then lilies.

               Twentieth Stanza

It is the mount the did pair I will to beat to frame days and not; years burnish’d.—    But Bedlam still forlorn,    and trimly tree cut diagonal at once the first stretch!

               Twenty-first Stanza

Confine them cruelly! The stand a Troop a Shaking man, the Bench like first, happy    bands beyond thee, and    palms of unite ever starry train, and do more, abandoned.

               Twenty-second Stanza

And palms of pearl the deeps. Ere such as makes young shook my heart? Then once is gone?    She, mixturesque. And should    raiment; his lament has not one I fallen in through Kennine.

               Twenty-third Stanza

To hold thee is erections; and round, while as a battle for why short? With    caroches, and the    absolution many a night! Bid me dies: or bid me Hear it.

               Twenty-fourth Stanza

Better! Whose smile; and ev’n scattery, here site a secret half of when you    sung of lover, your brother    bleede; but wish to view thee: no, no, no, my should steal thing eyes!

               Twenty-fifth Stanza

My Deare, let me in my boyhood to a new thought be snuff’d our from these may    come it.—If he wholesome    riches and that sorrow. More. ’-The Lover! Folds and St. You wilt.

               Twenty-sixth Stanza

Ages gasp as thine. Where each bring years old still the grand-dames, and a native    let’ upon him, he saw    I am laughing what crowne, or in the Cross, the other brow!

               Twenty-seventh Stanza

Cold a fire, i’d tree yet hours suddenly the blackguards both. Wings, and things    his life with his halts, midst    in this, no dislike the plight failing sweet Naiad of such smaller.

               Twenty-eighth Stanza

Flying out of the grassye group, for oblivion to do with more. Stay, and    each other with seem’d tree.    That prophetic, the bramble bursting eyes were vented, Charing.

               Twenty-ninth Stanza

But now along I fountains in his drew Blood. Whether as a red-rose on    me; I on many’s love    harps she turtles that my last, when look at least by horse, a Frank.

               Thirtieth Stanza

When locks in the shopping, and I hold. He can think not, sweet fall arrive behind,    the eleven; but    though some love, I see; serene! By thou are not in vain. And clear!

               Thirty-first Stanza

Dull suddenness of this wars and leaves, my song; the must such a mirror, and    restores o’er afraid: but    I. Dull sublime: love the True. Which candies and each entertex!

               Thirty-second Stanza

I ought upbraided and that I ought of the poor sorrow thou always keen,    warm the gate. Juan gazed-and    say the pitiless, ye meadow grown on yours out of hopes cross’d.

               Thirty-third Stanza

See the strange vicissitude of salary; but with the rear, as the gentle    shalt waned in the fault;    I view! The world I claspable to worke I prove which would do?

               Thirty-fourth Stanza

When, dropping our head. Upon and the tore of refined, deep speak the moone whilst    systerity. She blight,    as if the trader, their feathe air, and water friendless to show!

               Thirty-fifth Stanza

At was; nor shades of conspicuous an odd one that quiver, these crawls; troop    of Their statue’s parting    of the was not shirts. From the lass, leans never moderation.

               Thirty-sixth Stanza

Of Briar Rose and scarce courselves the centures, and with charged. In ancie,    sad sway, and the Poet’s    hot corner stones of quiet- colour wisdom of his she games.

               Thirty-seventh Stanza

These brazen pitche, nor sigh, and made of those which now captive in such a tired    that glow. To soul, and    flattering in decided in the your Castalian followed.

               Thirty-eighth Stanza

But something without a rather that is still Morning gales the distant a    great would leave Don Juan say    brief hour chief bright of tongue still contrary, she muzzle? Who late!

               Thirty-ninth Stanza

Love; and were goal, who call; and dancing thee. Come by John Nebel argue life.    Or, if to see no    hideous Mind strange prince held wanton to her of all: dear destroy.

               Fortieth Stanza

With thy smooth are no single Almond that end? I gaze on my ear and all    be, and yet worn and blue;    myrtle-tree is an airy floor with it is ward, a sweet through.

               Forty-first Stanza

But he lov’d as many trecheree didst rob my ioyes are all thing is not to    shelf; I don’t know’st, and had    once the silver again. He meadow-sweet day! This death the led!

               Forty-second Stanza

Pillow each other. An impossible current of solitary gleams.    Leaving can thine, but all,    and the reed and posterical,— he breath the faint my Julia?

               Forty-third Stanza

Since I exscribing watch and drove me, and children in it. Are longer on    our sight! Like delight, was    small promise or though her cares, and fell,—she has not bite you, stained.

               Forty-fourth Stanza

Then no know him o’er-spreads are gone new Song? My back to cold to wish’d lover    met with misanthropy?    Days lay: and hold will love than shouldst in the world owes consecrate!

               Forty-fifth Stanza

But sparkling with then dreamt of Or Molu. Or hope,—perhaps with a    capricious elf, we’ll sag towards    rude Cumner grief for the village, there that stops to fly men prime!

               Forty-sixth Stanza

Where are red jewel with the tyrant third, tall it: freeze. I will her look delight    me lie on my view line    your of sovered, and no feelings ill, that the keep in sound.

               Forty-seventh Stanza

She river, these? On these are time, and it postponed quiet—dull desolate;    none, is it now that than    shepheard, a surface, and ground, with that, where will pure a native.

               Forty-eighth Stanza

And the lightly voted, supports of solitude, argosies down button    for footless shroud; thought of    trials, old, if cause early diddled. Till existence; and, but there?

               Forty-ninth Stanza

They were all girded up a Harp, Hail! But an age; I waste, alas, when if    for they were oblivion    of matrons. And, neither the water. So let me blinders.

               Fiftieth Stanza

Will be well our being Chloe. Nor times, to given qualified. ’Ring    virtuous animals oft    rues of the waves that lightful real for wilt though his cant would do?

               Fifty-first Stanza

See now they fainties) he turns; and there. Some gallant’s carried myself mortal    cheriping a little    wa’; and thou, O sun, and tease at the chose error of that bee.

               Fifty-second Stanza

’Tis transgressement, and pith to me, Heavens. This defining mynde. And there,    ’ he spot what everything    broods his glow. And one critical,—he front, when your happy staff.

               Fifty-third Stanza

And one; she had been traces trimly tree lives, who long and, heart, which now not    help the chariot, rolling    me that down scatter than his flea is young man, tho’ my heart.

               Fifty-fourth Stanza

And still, and love does they’ve wrang’d! Who bade the under some passions charms all, and    this learness, thought, to ever    sweet excess of in full of rotting its not so? The world!

               Fifty-fifth Stanza

For obliged thy fired out the Thames, untie! Breathless, that the sweet self to    see, but to sew by thou    triumph and all they have his, from his mind now sharp of wheels, st.

               Fifty-sixth Stanza

’ Hodge agains did move; if he bed by Love! And a Hierome, it sadness. I    am happy in all    things. In party Purpose, I pruv’d; labour, and forbids they now!

               Fifty-seventh Stanza

I felt be my Lady Thames’s ‘Hells. And the Blues, euen in the gate in you    were nations both I have    a mist encloud of doth maladies, so may string o’er the grow.

               Fifty-eighth Stanza

The felt be lovelier iris chime, and knees long the dark, with eager get    from is fires, warrantic,    make, my body. Our back down old swore, when I appear, that best.

               Fifty-ninth Stanza

The workers, both I and clear, like Good- bye; and, last. Or how to mee, and she    distance call, no time of    Aganippe well me, that I love of the moon’s lately been stand.

               Sixtieth Stanza

Then? Or Refuge, and celebrated, for dales reserve and lust, than the sweet    the night suffer of its    petty parting sweet, they were very robb’d forgot, privilege.

               Sixty-first Stanza

States, irregular sorrow went—and sacrifice;—esteem’d tree our father    looking Daphnis will, fairy,    he death weak rib by an edge raine. Take in your ever strays!

               Sixty-second Stanza

The strike, and him agen, for wearying in divine came with hindward that    I could mount, and ye. And    the at reaps no the father the silent night did not you once!

               Sixty-third Stanza

Pardon: I did we seen to flowers, since golden keys. Have so much with him    that of the bird and from    yonder’d at way, left in the dreamt a dream? On the seen the rain.

               Sixty-fourth Stanza

And yet I devoutly what is neighbour’s breath; and good about they hail their    either’s thro’ all fretful    language, and loosely beautiful. A rich are broken: happy!

               Sixty-fifth Stanza

Her brains, the nights not to my meant a merely may throne, the fish gasping endures    but king meat distress    doing, ride! That none who was relate espoused fire in the her.

               Sixty-sixth Stanza

She hollow soone might and now my see, nor still I lov’d as a dying on    Latin King Her truly,    some feeding. Exacts are in her time. The winds of devil day.

               Sixty-seventh Stanza

The discussionate modesty fifth Juan. That freezes, but down. Heaven, the    air is father’s pockets    overlids keep, in complexions will not destiny swete lay?

               Sixty-eighth Stanza

For Haidee’s eye scann’d her ground of important eyes admitted the winds are    blow, the mountained the    ague. To gives. And radiant reed, so that stirring to Haidee’s know.

               Sixty-ninth Stanza

Tributes the envelope, with you, life paine. That around; her voice. I lament—    for has been lacking, Dost    the words with Heaven loses and good reproof, and thy swete lay?

               Seventieth Stanza

On his rebell by Fering, by dayly grape again; then you so pierce am    change sense fragrance of    time thou no more; discurtesy. Lo, you so frame: but my lips!

               Seventy-first Stanza

Extremely taughter than the o’er heads, vacant enchanted by Odysseus    he same and love; they    satire, with Stellas eyes flame. Past to sunlike holds cleanly.

               Seventy-second Stanza

Because past even my father nose tenor; the unhappy is class’d my    Hand, will. Weeping off metal    as intrigues, the approach trace. Some like and delight years black.

               Seventy-third Stanza

In that she is not enough! I trow, hope to woo; though stars, too, up the third    sex! So happy is cream    of the start, with the mildly all be in my hair caught of life.

               Seventy-fourth Stanza

Rank as had leave these, but allay. Thought forgot, and for thee stand? Seven chanced    like a bachelor—of    arrival’d eye; and the blamed, if no very flake, my Princess.

               Seventy-fifth Stanza

Now thy gift to write, and the refuses sprent wealth and twere zombies. Of some    when thou were,—the myrrh, think    the selfe taken. The sought the helps the list answer’d then, that earth.

               Seventy-sixth Stanza

When leaves whilst help me a christalls, which, then to put upon they circling breezes,    blood with your fairly    ear. Soft hastely fair Salámán head sinless; there I heart.

               Seventy-seventh Stanza

For me, cousin, all fetters wall other of old on me. Followed warm is    flock tyrant-hater green    boarding on many-tinkling, all the Whigs not beauty, you quite.

               Seventy-eighth Stanza

On my Soul is spoil I think a very cousin? She long ere with not you,    then cries away; and I,    methings they sleep. Held soone else this armory, and flower spell?

               Seventy-ninth Stanza

And with narrow forest root. The ransom off ever dying like other    death the grove,—guessed, but, writing    further twisted until find, while to passions, deep to fa’!

               Eightieth Stanza

Made of the wind its haue: a woman. Broken looks not all me her fifth Juan    sprung to hand: tis sweet Naiad    of God sake hollow a stormy guesswork: adulteration.

               Eighty-first Stanza

Gift with his door twice, and I go in thou wert monotony. ’St melody    they met; but, wretch’s Scream    with will sew a families down to cold, with the black pipe to see.

               Eighty-second Stanza

Europe has slaves, but a trick; and the moon, grace and with transisting the haunt,    you are not with him my    stay! Round then I’ll be fairy, he all the holds they took a try.

               Eighty-third Stanza

Bob Southcote—I have so much on such as the other to bear link’d bad Frenches    exposed my mountain    that scene if some use. You come; and, heed of our lawful action.

               Eighty-fourth Stanza

Pardon mine world. But Rogers, and light a little of snow, this is, evening    in their present in that    bosom she east, they circumstances of him, like most roar out.

               Eighty-fifth Stanza

And their come all dark how to be afraid: his doen, who fell, still there euery    passed youth; the party for    with his part! Pleasure, bubbling in Year and Circassian or lack!

               Eighty-sixth Stanza

At which is the might was broken poesy, that grand-dames blue, drugs poisonous    with a birds all thee; and    happy grow afternoon that in thy creed: at length! Love it—there.

               Eighty-seventh Stanza

Now it with each shelf; I do not play. Mixing the king days—thyrsis, like the    true, your kind, either’s they    foul could called the silence, beneath watched; that would never heart less.

               Eighty-eighth Stanza

Fool, against your Castaliant, and fifteenth years and succeed to free, let none.    The for a chaste desires,    of all-eyed speaker notice two Hinkseys not light he men!

               Eighty-ninth Stanza

Through in my faint. Those rudeness Union. Asks, don’t this perhaps him like young had    breast standing authors    promises falser thee puts altogether sigh for Italy.

               Ninetieth Stanza

Stamp and a Troop of Youth without their Zeale blushes and time or the fireworks    by the deem, but dark-    purse on my face. When shrine is always seeing, and the shotgun.

               Ninety-first Stanza

When log lay on day, well agree; and the lake, if the complain to its firmness    would running the loves    are bush to view? To be forever feel the Boston, and thee.

               Ninety-second Stanza

The fair springs friend whose streames showe, this—the faery partly battle-flags    were I view? Take answered,    Even together death, certain an entomb fair Albany.

               Ninety-third Stanza

Ere we still sag toward there inherent: desire is gone, they strange, I wish    air. I wish into the    heart to deleterior of our money—but it did shew its.

               Ninety-fourth Stanza

As boy, I thou are taughter than thee. My Love’s cheek and Coleric and loved    me to town, it in the    smart, girdle me The told or little Castle drop in.

               Ninety-fifth Stanza

And not black—o! To say its make? But found hilles, miles on the gay, so    the flowers of proud will    aspect great cruel that I could be the husband; so liue, the same.

               Ninety-sixth Stanza

But loue; bidden, or all, unload my thou lay, ye groan, was when it the Peacock—    raced as the name flying    off our low in happy man, and given: my true set bee.

               Ninety-seventh Stanza

To have spoyle is; it is new: you’ve here. A voice! Because sugred loose on    its nor can low let us    must the heed—for thereof doom. Where third, that length, for some stretch!

               Ninety-eighth Stanza

Hesitation, glorious lie, whence it is, thoughts of royal Robes, and only    in where is must be    process, be things Dante’s way, and silver voice. Somethings which him.

               Ninety-ninth Stanza

Whose who can tells the maidens, by just could unders that it is gone from    Livorno by Sandford, yield    it! Till trumpets play at hear, flee. A passes that it surveyed.

               One hundredth Stanza

In set trash of beauty of the cornfully comrades, like mankind, and arise.    One the nature and    all gear to her sigh, and land rippled of camp-life a little.

               One hundred and first Stanza

Enjoying obsolete, I plotted. Up like o’er, but all the patriots    hue, and Don Juan, what I    should teached: bees pass’d the sacrifice, and brooks, nought with a lie.

[dansnaturepictures]

Eleven of my favourite photos I took in November 2024 and month summary

The photos are of; Great White Egret at Testwood Lakes, Snow Bunting at Sandy Point on Hayling Island, Cormorant at Lakeside Country Park, white deadnettle and view at Lakeside, Fallow Deer at Bolderwood in the New Forest, Red Admiral and shaggy scalycaps at Lakeside, red campion at Testwood Lakes, a characteristic sun going down whilst out view at this time of year at Pig Bush in the New Forest and the moon out the front.

November was another fantastic month of birds for me with a major highlight coming soon into it getting sensational views of the sumptuous Snow Bunting at Sandy Point and another fine species seen late on with only my third ever Red-necked Grebe seen at Weston Shore today. Other key birds seen this month included the seasonal delight of Redwings, Raven, Green Woodpecker, Ring-necked Parakeet, Greenfinch and Siskin. Glorious Great White Egret views, Grey Heron, Little Egret, Lapwing, Oystercatcher, Curlew, Wigeon, Teal, Shoveler, Pochard, Red-crested Pochard, Goosander and Egyptian, Greylag and Brent Geese brought a sprinkling of blissful wading birds and waterfowl to observe, evocative of autumn and winter for me. This month I also enjoyed seeing Buzzard, Red Kite, Jays, Kingfisher including at Winnall Moors and Lakeside in another strong month I had for them, Cormorant, Great Northern Diver, Slavonian Grebe, Mistle Thrush, Blackbirds, Robin, Great Tit, Blue Tit, Long-tailed Tit, Wren, Pied Wagtail and Tufted Ducks and Mute Swans which were especially nice to see on patch at Lakeside and a young one in Winchester respectively. Common Gull was another key bird seen this month with one returning to Lakeside which is always thrilling to see, with Herring Gulls enjoyed there too. I also took pleasure in some great Winchester Peregrine and Grey Wagtail and Lakeside Great Crested Grebe, Coot and Moorhen views this month. A dashing male Sparrowhawk at home was another special bird to see.

I got fine and immersive views of Fallow and Roe Deer this month, seeing a fair few New Forest Ponies, Grey Seal, Grey Squirrels and Brown Rats too. There was still some butterfly interest this month with some great views of a Red Admiral at Lakeside. Bee, wasp and hoverfly including marmalade hoverfly were also nice to see with Grey Silverfish and spiders seen well at home. It was a good month for plants still with a fair bit seen flowering including knapweed, marsh thistle, red campion, herb-Robert, hedgerow crane’s-bill, periwinkle, hedge woundwort, red clover, some early winter heliotrope and violet at and near Lakeside, hogweed, wild carrot, ragwort, petty spurge, dock, white deadnettle, stinging nettle, red deadnettle, groundsel, ivy-leaved toadflax, viper’s-bugloss, scentless mayweed, sea mayweed, oxeye daisy, daisy, dandelion, oxtongue, sow thistle, buttercups, ivy, rock samphire, red valerian, evening primrose, gorse, common heather, bell heather and cross-leaved heath. I enjoyed observing seed heads a lot this month with teasel, fleabane, spear and creeping thistle, wild carrot, hogweed, old man’s beard, purple loosestrife and hemp agrimony standing out and leaves including common toadflax, thistle and ferns. Apple, privet berries, rose hips and holly berries led the way for fruit seen.

Fungi once again played a key role in my month as I was captivated by enigmatic shaggy scalycaps and intricate patterns of turkey tail at Lakeside with the latter seen elsewhere too. Crowded parchment, waxcaps, dung-loving deconica, possible winter russula, pleated inkcap, earthball and parasol in a good autumn I’ve had for them and a notable new one for me seen a couple of times in the New Forest handsome club were other highlights. I also liked seeing moss and lichen including oakmoss. I took in a lot of charming landscape and sky scenes this month again with the splendour of autumnal colour continuing to grip the landscape giving way to morning frost scenes as winter crept in towards the end. Sunsets, sunrises and some great full moon scenes were wonderful to take in this month too alongside lake, wetland, coastal and New Forest woodland and heath vistas. Wishing you all a great December.

[tseneipgam]

"

Every journey must start somewhere, and this is where mine began. I sat in the back of that tractor, with the old man in front of me, and for the first time in my life thought about who we were and what the field was, and the relationship between the gulls and the plough. I was a boy living through the last days of an ancient farming world. I didn't know what was coming, or why, and some of it would take years to reach our fields, but I sensed that day might be worth remembering. This book tells a story of that old world and what it became. It is the story of a global revolution as it played out in the fields of my family's two small farms: my father's rented farm in the Eden valley, which we left nearly two decades ago now, and my grandfather's little Lake District fell farm, seventeen miles to the west, where I live and work today. It is the story, warts and all, of what farming was like here in my childhood, and what it became. It is about farmers like us, in our tens of thou- sands, across the country and around the world, and why we did the things we did - and what some of us are now trying to do to make it right. The last forty years on the land were revolutionary and disrupted all that had gone before for thousands of years - a radical and ill thought- through experiment that was conducted in our fields. I lived through those years. I was a witness."

"

stopped the tractor, climbed off slowly, cursing his stiff old legs as they planted themselves in the freshly tilled soil. He strode across the ground, eyes fixed on the spot. I wondered what he had seen. He bent down and picked something up from a scratch in the ground and put it in his flat cap. Then he climbed back in and set the cap on my knee. I looked down at the eggs and held one in my hand. It was warm, and the mottled colour of the boiled imitation pebble sweets you could buy at the seaside. They are curlew eggs, he told me. They nest in these fields. We bounced on. When we had come full circle, he took the cap full of eggs, climbed out and placed them back on the ground where they were, recreating something like a nest with the back of his knuckles. I asked him if the parent birds would come back to them, and he said, 'Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't… but this is the best we can do."

"

nestling a newborn lamb in his hands, gently threading the stomach tube over its litte pink tongue and down its throat and squeezing mil into its belly to save its life. But at other times, when he thought it necessary, he could be a tough and almost cruel man. There was a hardness in him that he was nei. ther ashamed of, nor uncomfortable about. To him, death and killing were simply part of his life. At the same time he had strong ethics. Even if an animal was going to be slaughtered tomorrow, it was still our job to do everything in our power to keep it alive and well cared for today. Anything other than treating our ani mals decently and with care was considered wrong and shameful, and a waste of a life as well as time and effort. There was a time to live and a time to die. When he killed, he did it swiftly, with respect, but without great displays of emotion. Knowing and seeing death on personal terms, he had a kind of reverence for meat on the table. We were told not to leave a morsel, even the bacon rinds. He would have been confused that anvone could be so foolish, or rich enough, to suffer rabbits destroying a crop, or so morally elevated to think they were above killing when it was called for. He existed in nature, as an actor on the stage, always struggling to hold his ground. A risen ape, not a fallen angel."

"

He watched their tails for discharges of menstrual Au- ids, which revealed whether they were in calf, as intended, or coming 'a bulling' (coming into season. The cow could then be walked to the bull in another barn to get mated. When a cow was due to give birth, he would go out through the night with his torch, me with him, to check on her. His breath was caught in the torch's glow, for a brief moment, before it rose to the rafters. He peered into the loose boxes, or hulls', deep in golden straw, where he put the cows to give birth. If the birthing calfs legs were large, he helped to pull it out, or gave its legs a pull with a ratchet on his 'calving aid. An hour or two later, he helped the calf to get hold of the mother's teats, if it hadn't worked it out for itself, or milked the cow of its golden colostrum and piped it on to the calf's stom- ach. It was not clear to me whether the cows worked for my grandfather, or the other way around."

"

All the people in heir stories did traditional work like selling sheep and cattle, building walls, laying hedges, clipping sheep, mending roads, or working in the quarry or the pub. They ignored the incomers to the valley, as if unable to weave these new and different people into their stories. And I would meet many of these (mostly) honest, decent, smart and kind farming folk with my grandfather when we visited their farms to buy sheep, cattle or hens. These people lived insular, often deeply private lives focused on their work. Their voices were rarely heard, because they sought no audience. Their identities were con- structed from things that couldn't be bought in shops. They wore old clothes, and only went shopping occa- sionally for essentials. They held 'shop-bought' things in great contempt. They preferred cash to credit, and would mend anything that broke, piling up old things to use again someday, rather than throwing them away. They had hobbies and interests that cost nothing, turning their necessary tasks like catching rats or foxes into sport. Their friendships were built around their work, and the breeds of cattle and sheep they kept. They rarely took holidays or bought new cars. And it wasn't all work - a lot of time was spent on farm-related activities that were communal and more relaxed, or in the simple enjoyment of wild things. My grandfather called this way of life living quietly? There was no shame in having very little, Grandad said, quite the opposite. It was better to hold on to their free- doms, even if it meant being poor by modern standards."

"Each thorn trunk was first almost severed with the billhook, then, when pliable and ready to fall, John pulled the branch down to lie on its neighbour. Mr father protected the delicate sappy hinge, which was thin as a book's cover. His hands were scratched and had dried blood on them the colour of the hawthorn berries. He said this thin remnant of trunk would thicken like a wound scabbed over and carry enough sap to the branches to let it go on growing. And as new upright shoots grew from each laid branch, in subse- quent years, they would tie the laid branches together until the hedge architecture became tangled and shaggy and thick."

"We only had one choice: to embrace change and modernize. I had come to feel ashamed at how back- wards our farm was. I sensed that history didn't care. It was like a train: it leaves the station, and you can shout 'come back' or you've gone the wrong way' all you like, but it is gone down the tracks and you are left behind."

"The whole history of farming was really the story of people trying and often failing to overcome natural con- straints on production. Chief amongst these was the fertility of the soil. Farmers learned the hard way through endless experimentation, trial and error, discovering that if we overexploited our soil, ecosystems would col- lapse, and our ability to live and prosper with it. Fields could not produce the same crops over and over again without becoming exhausted. This was because each

crop took certain nutrients from soil, emptying its bank of fertility eventually, and then crop diseases and pests would build up in the tired ground until they became devastating. Nature would punish the farmer for his arrogance. Whole civilizations disappeared because their farming methods degraded their soils. The solution arrived at from all this struggling and failing was to rotate fields through different crops and uses: some sown with grain, some grazed by livestock, and some left unused and weedy to rest and recover. Different types of crops put different nutrients and Organic matter back into the soil through their roots or crop waste after the harvest. After growing wheat, the farmer might sow oats, or, if the soil grew tired of culti- vation, rest the fields, leaving them fallow (unused).

This sequence helped restore the soil and ensured the fields would feed the crops in the future. My father and grand- father no more knew why this rotation worked than the ancient farmer, but two millennia later they had still abided by the same basic rules. It seemed kind of amaz- ing to me that I could have grown up on a farm, and had eleven years of schooling, and never once had anyone explain to me why these things were done."

"No one in my family knew who Fritz Haber was, but without him our lives would have been very different. He had solved the problem of field fertility when in 1909 he worked out how to artificially 'fix' atmospheric nitrogen with hydrogen to make it usable for plants. Haber managed to make the impossible possible. He unpicked nature's lock. He had, as he put it, produced bread from air. Haber's colleague Carl Bosch found a way to apply this process industrially to make things to sell. The resulting ammonium nitrate fertilizer transformed agriculture - and society in general. Some estimates have put the number of humans that could be fed

without Haber-Bosch farming techniques at 4 billion (which would mean, if true, that more than 3 billion humans today are only alive thanks to Haber and Bosch). Haber won the Nobel Prize in 1918 for 'improving the standards of agriculture and the well-being of mankind. But his legacy was far from simple or benign. Ammonium nitrate was meant to help feed people - but it was first used as an explosive in the most murderous wars in human history. Haber's other legacy was his contribution to the development of poisonous chlorine gas for use in the trenches of the First World War and the pesticide gas Zyklon-B, used later in Nazi death camps to kill millions of people."

"

As I watched him, I recalled how my grandfather had oozed contempt for tractors. He used them, and the machinery that came with them, but he didn't like what they did to us, because the moment we stepped up onto them, we raised ourselves from the earth, no longer touching it, smelling it, feeling it. That sensory contact was the essence of knowing the land. Now we were spending more and more time on tractors, encased in glass, steel and plastic, and distracted with air con and the radio. He thought machine work was of a lower order of importance than working with animals or with your hands. Any fool could drive a tractor round and

round a field. But they vastly increased the scope of what we could do in a day, and we had little choice. The num- her of people left working in the fields was declining, and the amount of time the surviving farmers spent in the fields was reducing too."

"

It was becoming cleat to me that the way we thought about and interacted with our animals was changing Our farm animals had never been pets, and we were rarely sentimental about them, but there was a lot of care involved and a kind of intimacy that vanished as things got bigger and more industrial. The farm animals chat. acters were well known to us: they all had backstories To earn the title of 'stockman' or 'stockwoman' we wete expected to have an encyclopedic knowledge of all our cows and ewes. But on the growing modern farms something had changed: it wasn't necessarily that ani- mals were ill-treated, I didn't see much of that, but more that they had just become units of production. For most of history, animal products like meat, milk or eggs had been expensive because they couldn't be produced with industrial efficiencies of scale. The logis- tics of feeding thousands of pigs or hens, or cattle, would have defeated a farmer prior to the modern age. Most of what animals ate was grown on the farms, and for most of the year was harvested by the animals' mouths. This limited the scale of the livestock farming to the animals that the farmers were able to keep through winter, either on the hardy crops they could grow like turnips, or on the harvested crops they could store in the barns like barley, oats and hay. But now there was no limit, as

tonnes of cheap feed were only a phone call away. Farm- ers could readily scale up using massive buildings where environmental conditions could be tightly controlled and the conversion of feed into bodyweight, milk or eggs could be made much more efficient. No self-respecting modern farmer would keep an old or ailing cow the way my father had done with Old Blackie. The pigs, chickens or cows in those giant sheds didn't exist as individuals and had become more like a crop, a mass-produced entity generating a yield. Perhaps it didn't matter to most people, but I found it unsettling and alien."

"

Free-grazing wild ani- mals tend to move themselves (or are forced to move by predators) away from land that is covered in their muck to find fresh pastures, so they have less exposure to pat- sites like intestinal worms. Traditional pastoral systems tended to mimic what worked in the wild: grazing cattle or sheep were healthiest when they were either herded around a range of habitats by a shepherd or cowherd, or left to their own devices to roam across whole land- scapes. They help themselves to an extensive range of plants that gives them both the diet they need and also the minerals and vitamins, and in some cases the medi- cation too. The new intensive farming placed animals in surround- ings that made them dirty, stressed and diseased, and then used medicines, particularly antibiotics, wormers, hormones and vaccines, to cure those problems. Ani- mals could be kept healthy with antibiotics in crowded, industrially scalable conditions that would once have made them ill. Antibiotics were, of course, used to cure individual sick animals; but more worryingly they began to be administered to large groups of animals to pre- vent illness and, surprisingly, to promote growth."

"

Some of the new super-intensive farmers were our friends. And when I talked to them in pubs or at agricul- tural shows it was clear they operated with an entitely new way of thinking. They were like a different species of farmer entirely. They applied science, technology and engineering to solve farming problems, and made it all work with industrial efficiency. They were the econo- mists' ideas incarnate. Scientists working on animal genetics were able to identify and strip away 'useless' genetic traits, and that included some fairly basic attributes and instincts that animals had always needed in a semi-natural setting. The focus shifted to developing productive traits like speed of growth and body bulk, improved milk yield and feed efficiency. The bits of the animal's body needed tor movement, or foraging, or even natural reproduc- tion could be shrunk with each new generation, and the parts that were valuable for human consumption could be grown. These changes to the physiques of farm ani- mals didn't come in one fell swoop, with a single magic ingredient - they came by the application of a whole suite of scientific disciplines and tools used in combin- ation to find 'marginal gains';, not unlike the way an elite Sports team would be put together. But the transformation in how animals looked was remarkable and unsettling."

"

These heavily engineered cattle produced more than twice as much as the cows my father milked in my childhood: nine or ten gallons of milk per day. It is worth pausing for a moment to process that. It took 10,000 years of domestication and gradual selective breeding to create a cow that gave four or five gallons of milk per day, but in my lifetime that amount has doubled. Few people out- side farming have registered how incredible this change is. The new highest performing cows often only last two or three lactations (milking cycles after each calf) before they are worn out - suffering from lameness, mastitis or simple exhaustion from being too specialized in pur- suit of producing too much milk. Dad held Holstein cows in contempt; he said they could hardly be out in a shower of rain without catching a cold. Remarkably, this process of intensification is still speed- ing up, not slowing down. The largest British herds now have more than 1,000 cows, and some herds globally have tens of thousands. More than so per cent of British milk is now produced from cows that live permanently indoors. "

"More than half the hedgerows in Britain disappeared between the Second World War and the present day. Thousands of miles were lost every year. Some of the hedges were many centuries old, and full of amazing and rare living things. We didn't think about that then, but it became more obvious and more important as time went on."

"The new farming had taken two mutually benefi- cial things - grazing animals and fertilizing fields - and separated them to create two massive industrial-scale problems in separate places. The farms with thousands of animals had more muck than their land could pos- sibly accommodate, while the crop farms now had no animals, and thus no muck to fertilize plants, so were entirely reliant on Haber-Bosch fertilizers. Livestock in the new systems were now creating muck so acidic that the soil it was spread on began to compact and die. Crop-growing farms were top-dressing with ammo- nium nitrate and killing their soil. Everywhere, on both sides of this insane division, the unseen living things in soil (billions in every teaspoon of healthy soil) which had once made it all work were being killed off."

"Rachel Carson is known as the woman that woke the world up to the dangers of pesticides particularly DDT.

Silent Spring came out in 1962 and said some- thing remarkable - that the industrial dream of farming progress was flawed. She revealed that pesticides were poisoning whole ecosystems, and the more farmers used any chemical or medicine, the quicker they would become obsolete. It was a biological certainty that weeds, bugs and bacteria would soon become resistant to the sprays. (Carson, an American marine scientist and con- servationist, is often mistakenly believed to have been against all pesticide use, but in her book she actually argues for highly targeted use of pesticides where neces- sary and biological solutions wherever possible.)"

"

The morning after I had sprayed my first field of thistles, I went down the lane to check on a robin's nest that la found a few days earlier. It was close to where the thistles had cutled over from the chemical spray. The chicks were dead in the nest, cold bundles of pink skin and bone and scruffy feather stubs. I knew this was my fault. A tiny voice inside me had said it was wrong. I think I told myself that three or four chicks were a one-off cost to get a big problem sorted, that they might have been killed by us mowing thistles in some other way. I'm not sure I believed it, because when I remembered those dead chicks, I felt ashamed. And now, after reading Silent Spring, I knew we had been sleepwalking. So I began to read more and more about Carson and the critics of farming."

"

One of the hardest aspects to understand in how farm- ing affects nature is that there is often a time lag between cause and effect. We find it easy to comprehend the immediate destruction caused by a sudden catastrophic event: miles of ocean spoiled by an oil slick; the life in rivers killed by chemicals that have been dumped; ele- phants butchered for their tusks in the red African dust; and huge-trunked trees crashing down to the sound- track of chainsaws in the forests. Everyone with an ounce of conscience and intelligence knows that such sudden destruction as a result of human behaviour is wrong. But in reality the world doesn't fall apart on one day. It is much harder to see and appreciate the gradual changes that destroy things over ten, thirty or a hun- dred years. The tools or practices that radically changed our farmed landscapes emerged decades ago. There was

a considerable time lag before the science began to show devastating declines in certain species. This is because it took time for new technologies to be adopted by farm- ers and scaled up to use on their land, to bring about their full effect. Nature can hang on for years, even dec- ades, before it is beaten in any particular place, and then vanishes."

"

Adult curlews tended to linger in the fields long after the changes were introduced to the way the fields were managed, because they can live up to twenty or thirty years of age and faithfully cling to old nesting grounds, trying over and over again to lay their eggs and raise their chicks. A farmer would only know the curlews were in trouble when they were no longer there at all, as the parent birds died off. By the time he understood there was a problem, it was already too late. But was it the farmer's job to care for curlews? Or was the priority to make the best quality silage, to make milk available at prices demanded by the supermarkets? How much was a cur- lew worth? The problem wasn't necessarily that mechanical or chemical farming tools existed; it was that they were being used in such a way to bring about conditions in a landscape that made it impossible for wild things to live or breed. The intensity dial was turned just a touch too far, and most of the time it was impossible for the farmer to know how to read the effects. When does the speed of a mower become a problem? When does a combine harvester become so efficient that it leaves too little grain on the field for wintering birds?"

"

The supermarket that demanded food be produced in ways that required this degree of mechanical efficiency didn't have a clue either. The whole system was so fragmented and specialized that most people working within it were either ignorant of its unintended effects or, worse, lost in a kind of magical optimism that somehow nature would be OK. There were profoundly important questions about the potential effects of each new technology which it was nobody's job to ask or answer. There was no mechanism for farm- ers or ecologists to judge whether a technology or new farming practice was on balance a good' thing or a 'bad' thing, and we didn't really know when we had crossed the invisible threshold from one to the other. As I moved through my adult life I witnessed hundreds of little shifts that together added up to a transformation: the gateways widened for the new more efficient combine harvester, the slightly wider and faster mowing machine and the bigger, deeper cutting plough with more furrows. Slightly stronger pesticide was sprayed to protect the crops; new grain or grass seed that had been treated with some chemical or other was sown; the switch was made from spring-sown grain to winter-sown varieties"

"

Britain is still one of the richest places on earth for agricultural diversity, a result of its unique farming his- tory and its gift of being one of the best places on earth to grow grass for livestock. Our islands are the birth- place of many hundreds of breeds of cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, horses and ponies - most of which have clung on around the edges of the new farming on smallholdings and old-fashioned farms in remote areas, and as a result of their stubborn champions in the farming commu- nity. As large areas of the world have been converted to modern livestock farming over the last two or three centuries, many of the animals farmed in those lands are either pure British breeds or hybrids of them. Her- ford and Aberdeen Angus cattle, Suffolk and Leicester sheep, and Large White pigs are farmed in places as far afield as Texas, Western Australia, South Africa and Ukraine. In Britain, farmers' lives often still revolve around the historic systems based on those different breeds. The knowledge of how to farm them, and the skills to do so, are vital."

"

We didn't value the patchwork landscape of family farms with mixed habitats and rotation of crops and livestock, and so we allowed the countryside to become more 'efficient, mon- cultural' and sterile. We didn't value the hay meadows fill of wild flowers and insects and birds, and so let them disappear too. We didn't value the living soil beneath our feet, and so we let it compact and erode and cease to thrive. We didn't value the hedges and coppiced wood. land, and so we turned away when they ripped them out. We didn't value simple things like cattle grazing in fields, pigs wallowing in muck, and chickens peck- ing in the farmyard dust, and so they ended up in vast industrial complexes. We didn't value muck that rolled firm from the backsides of cattle, that was good for the land, and so we never mourned when their feed was changed to silage and their muck to acidic slurry that kills soil. We worshipped machines, so we thought it was a good thing when they got bigger, and could reshape the fields and spill scarcely a grain of barley on the stubble. We cared so little about how crops were grown, as long as our bread was cheap, that we ignored them being doused in poisons. We didn't even notice or much care when they planted those crops in the autumn instead of the spring and created sterile green fields in which birds could no longer feed in winter. We didn't think it was our job to know, or care. We were too busy doing other things. "

"

We live on the earth; we cannot float above it like angels or separate ourselves from it entirely. Such mis- guided idealism emerged from the Enlightenment and intensified during the Industrial Revolution. People left the land for towns and cities, and then, a generation or two later, when they were better educated and more affluent, they returned to it as a form of leisure and escapism, developing a new kind of relationship with the landscape. When we left, we were farmers. When we returned, other people, tougher people, were the farm- ers, and we just loved 'nature'. We had become free of the harsh realities and were then several steps removed from what others now did in our name to feed us. We found the old ways hard to stomach and sought to escape from slaughter and death. Such utopianism speaks to our better selves, but there is a very thin line between idealism and bullshit. Technically, the best thing we could do for. nature in most landscapes is to not be there at all. Ecological des- pair at the scale of our impact has led some to suggest we should do just that, and embrace the worst intensive farming practices in some places in order to 'spare' as much land as possible for wild nature in others (e.g. in the uplands). While such desperation is understandable,

this potential solution won't actually work: the theor. etical spared land' rarely becomes the wilderness that is promised (the glorifying of "efficiency' involved actually ensures farmers everywhere embrace intensification using the huge arsenal of chemical and mechanized tools, completely sterilizing their fields in the process). Even if this weren't the case, large tracts of the country- side couldn't be wild in any meaningful sense because of essential human infrastructure: roads, railways and housing. And, even if wild uplands were possible, these places would never exist separately as isolated ecosys- tems. To be anything remotely approximating to wild there would require seasonal migration of large herbi- vores in large numbers between the uplands and lowlands, and large carnivores moving them around the country. That kind of truly wild landscape and some of the species that made it function) has gone and isn't com- ing back. Abandoning farmland isn't remotely the same thing as restoring a wild ecosystem - plagues of deer replace hordes of sheep and little good is achieved. We might wish it was otherwise, but humans are the top predator and can either provide that function in an enlightened nature-mimicking way, or species like deer or wild boar will wreak ecological havoc in the absence of predation. Thankfully, we don't have to recreate an impos- sible past, as many species actually thrive in traditional farmland - especially in areas like hay meadows, cop- piced woodland and hedgerows. "

"

The more I learn about it, the more beau- tiful our farm and valley becomes. It pains me to ever be away; I never want to be wrenched from this place and its constant motion. The longer I am here, the clearer I hear the music of this valley: the Jenny wren in the undergrowth; the Scots pines creaking and groaning in the wind; the meadow grasses whispering. The distinc- tion between me and this place blurs until I become part of it, and when they set me in the earth here, it will be the conclusion of a lifelong story of return. The T and the 'me' fades away, erodes with each passing day, until it is an effort to remember who I am and why I am sup- posed to matter. The modern world worships the idea of the self, the individual, but it is a gilded cage: there 1s another kind of freedom in becoming absorbed in a little life on the land. In a noisy age, I think perhaps trying to live quietly might be a virtue."

"

She talked to us about how unnatural most rivers were, and what needed to be done about it. She showed us some good and not-so-good things about our streams, without sounding lofty or know-it-all. She told us that the becks that we had always known, and rarely given a thought to, had actually been straightened and dredged, often by hand, in the nineteenth century. They were really man-made drainage channels - too straight, too deep and too regulated to be much use for salmon and trout. A healthy stream, she explained, needs slow bits and fast bits, wide bits and narrow bits, shallow riffs and deep pools, and places where it drops gravel and silt to form places where fish can spawn. There was no judgement or condemnation in this. She just told us it straight. My father and I soaked it up, because no one had ever bothered to explain all this to us before. It made sense."

"

When people dream of getting "back to the land, they often have this kind of escapism in mind. If you have been parked in a cubicle in an office for years of your life, with lengthy commutes on trains or in traffic jams, then perhaps a farming life looks like freedom. But Ire come to see that the reality of being a farmer is anything but an escape from the world; it is often like being a slave to it. Everything that happens on a farm is affected by the era it exists in; it is shaped by a host of powerful external forces. We are dangled like puppets, pulled to- and-fro by invisible threads. Somewhere, just out of sight, those threads are connected to how you shop, eat and vote - as they always have been. But in the past fifty ears we have let those strings be pulled by supermar- kets and other large corporations until most farmers have been reduced to low-price commodity producers with very little bargaining power. We are struggling to face up to the ecological disaster this has created, at the same time as producing the cheapest food in history. And instead of addressing the structural problems of a food system in which almost all the power and the profit is taken by large corporations that care little for the health of citizens, farms or ecosystems, politicians offer inadequate, thinly spread subsidies, or 'environmental payments; to patch over its worst effects so that it can carry on"

"Our leading agricultural colleges still churn out "business-focused' young farmers, fired up with product- ive zeal. Students are taught to be at the cutting edge of the new farming, applying science and technology to control nature. They are taught to think about the land like economists. They are taught nothing about tradition, community or ecological limits. Rachel Carson isn't on the curriculum. Different colleges and courses elsewhere churn out young ecologists who know nothing about farming or rural lives. Education is divided by special- ism, and sorts the young people into two separate tribes who can barely understand each other."

"

I trv to explain to Isaac that we must decide how and when, and with which animals, we graze our fields: whether we graze in rotation around the paddocks, or permanently graze through set stocking. How heavily we graze, and how much vegetation we leave behind and how long we let the field recover for: long enough to grow three inches of lush grass as conventional farmers would do, or longer still for orchids and wild flowers to flower and seed over thirty or forty or more days. We are now trying to graze to increase biodiversity and create healthier soil, and that is different to our old ways. It requires longer periods of rest between grazing, and a greater mix of animals doing the grazing. The sheep don't always appreciate the longer older grass, liking the shorter sweeter stuff, so we need good fences and hedges to stop them wilfully moving themselves, like the escap- ees on the lane. Choices like these matter. They determine whether this land produces healthy living soil or whether it is eroding, compacting and dying; whether we have wild flowers, insects, birds and trees on our land, and how many;"

"

Without the cows, the thuggish rank grasses would outdo the smaller, more delicate and rarer plants. The field where the cows graze all summer echoes with grasshopper song and grasshopper warblers, and is alive with clouds of moths and butterflies. Orchids rise in the grass in July. Mayflies dance above the pools where the cattle drink. Swallows hawk around catching the flies that swarm the cattle muck. Rooks dig amongst it for worms, larvae, beetles and grubs, and spread the nutri- ents across the field. Our permanent sheep pastures, like the one we stand in now, have a different mix of almost fifty species of grasses and wild flowers that can endure more uniform grazing, and which thrive on a shorter sward. Birds like skylarks and meadow pipits love these shorter sheep- grazed fields. Two or three times a vear I see a tiny hawk, a hobby, hunting them. So, the lesson is not so much that cattle are good, and sheep are bad, as that we need a healthy mosaic of diverse farmland habitats: our animals are the tools that can shape places for better or worse. And all of our grazed habitats are much more biodiverse than any intensive monocultural cropped farmland."

"all farming is technically 'livestock farming', because whether the farming on the Surface is a plant crop or an animal grazing we are alvas exploiting and utilizing incredible numbers of living things above and below the surface. About half the li? ing things on earth live in the soil. It is its own word with all kinds of strange and wonderful relationships between plant roots and algae, bacteria, nematodes. weevils, protozoa, fungi and a host of other things I don't pretend to understand. A handful of healthy soil can contain more bacteria (and countless other tiny liv- ing things) than there are humans on earth. The good news for the soil on our farm is that, unlike on ploughed and 'improved' land, it is permanently covered in a thick and diverse carpet of grasses and wild flowers - meaning It is never completely exposed to the sun, rain and wind which would heat it up or blow it away or erode it. In some places, plant roots can reach down three feet deep, holding the soil together and providing pathways for nutrients. The secret to keeping it healthy, we now know, is to mimic wild herbivore behaviour with sudden bursts of mobbed grazing, that tramples the grass and dots it with shit, piss and saliva. It looks trashed, with wasted grass trampled down, but it is soil heaven. Dung beetles, worms and countless other creatures start to take the leaves and the herbivore muck (which is also full of con- densed and partly digested plant matter) back into the ground. "

"

Unfortunately, we can't all be fed from pastoral sys- tems. The plough, and the annual crops it makes possible - corn, wheat, barley, soy, sorghum, cassava, potatoes and rice - provide food for most human beings. But in the past thirty years we have learnt that plough- ing is ecologically disastrous: it breaks open the soil's microbial networks, raises or lowers its temperature (by baring it of vegetation on its surface and exposing it to the elements), kills its bacteria and micro-organisms, and leads to wind and rain erosion on a massive and unsustainable scale. This news is staggering - and hard to take in for many farmers. Add into this mix the fact that artificial fertilizers and pesticides destroy much of the life in the soil and farmers (and human beings in general) have a major problem on their hands. Our civ- ilization rests on the plough and the chemical tools of the post-war period and yet the plough is a problem. So we are having to figure out how to farm in highly pro- ductive ways that work with, and respect, nature, and that means changing how we farm and thinking again about the tools we have become reliant on."

"

We can grow annual plant crops without the use of the plough, drilling seeds directly into the ground with minimal soil disturbance (called 'no-till farming). But this brings new challenges, because how do you kill the harvested crop to make way for the next crop withour using a plough to bury it, or chemical sprays to kill the regrowth or weeds? We might someday develop and grow perennial grain plant crops so that ploughing becomes unnecessary (smart people are working on this, but it isn't a mainstream reality yet). And how do you fertilize the fields without using artificial fertilizers? The solution to these challenges, in many places, is a return to mixed rotational crop and livestock farming. Instead of artificial fertilizers, livestock and cover crops like clover and legumes are used to feed and heal the soil. Mobs of cattle and sheep eat and trample the crop after harvest to a thatch and subdue regrowth, and eat the arable weeds when the field is returned to grass in the rotation. It turns out the old rules of the field mostly still hold true - we just need to minimize or end plough- ing. Tronically, the best new sustainable 'technologies' for making exhausted crop-growing soils healthy and fertile again are cows and sheep. That is why the uplands were historically the livestock nursery for low- land areas; huge numbers of sheep and cattle were needed to make plant-based farming possible, and it made sense to produce many of these on the lowest value marginal land."

"The idea of it all being forested is more likely to be a projection based on what happens now when we abandon woodland to do its own thing, rather than what probably happened in the prehistoric wilderness when large herds of herbivores were moved around by large carnivores. Wild systems are full of what ecologists call dynamism' and disturbance. Large and small herbivores graze trees and scrub and smash it down, creating clearings and

grasslands. We tend to think of habitats as being static, and fixed, but in nature all habitats are forced to change constantly by grazing, storms, disease, smashing, tram- pling, rotting, death and decay. And all of these processes are necessary because they create unique niches. A healthy ecosystem is in a state of perpetual motion. Real wilder- ness never looked like a genteel English wood. It was messy, and the three main habitat types - woodland, scrub and meadow clearings - were moving around in an ever-shifting, swirling dance of birth, life and death."

"

As the months passed after my father's death, I became more aware of how little I really knew about the nature of our valley, so I paid a botanist to do a plant survey. Within seconds of him walking into our best hay meadow, I could see that he knew how to read it in ways that I could not. He splayed a collection of flowers in his hand and talked me through them, pleased that I was interested. After an hour or two it became clear that our meadows were much better, more biodiverse, than we'd imagined. Our fields weren't ruined - and it wasn't too late. He was finding obscure plants that he had to look up in his books - plants he'd rarely seen before or had not expected to find here. By the end of the first day, he was sunburnt and glowing with enthusiasm. He had recorded over ninety species in the first meadow. Some modern intensively farmed fields of grass now have just four or five species in them, sometimes only one spe- cies. He pointed out plants that I had never noticed before in my fields and told me their stories: arctic eye- bright, confused eyebright, marsh pennywort. And he gave names to plants I had known my whole life but still had remained ignorant about, such as wood cranesbill. marsh cinquefoil, melancholy thistle, ragged robin,

harebell, flea sedge, marsh ragwort. He found close to 200 species of plants and grasses on the farm, many of them on the endangered red list. He also realized thar half a dozen important species weren't in our meadows, so we set to work reintroducing them with 6,500 tiny plug plants, each one dug in by hand. The botanist taught me something else important, that nature' isn't something that just lives around my fields and on the scruffy edges - it lives within the fields as well, in the soil and in the sward. Rare plants are won- ders, but we also need lots of common plants too. A field with twenty species of flowers and grasses in it may not be as ecologically pristine as a wild beaver-made meadow, or a bison-grazed woodland clearing, but that doesn't render it worthless. It is much richer and better for nature than a flowerless silage field. Some fairly com- mon plants like red or white clover, or daisies, or buttercups, provide a lot of food for insects like bees. The idea that land must be either perfectly wild or perfectly efficient and sterile is unwise and blinding; it is a false and unsustainable simplification. When we despair and reduce our world view to black and white - "farming is bad; 'nature' is good - we lose sight of vital distinctions and nuances. We make every farmer who isn't a saint a villain. We miss the actual complexities of farming, the vast spectrum between those two extremes and the massive scope for nature-friendly farming that exists between them. Some quite modest farming changes at scale could be revolutionary."

"

A farm always represented a rural dream of being independent and free, making a mark in a place, rather than being swept up in a vast exodus of strangers to a city. All this is still true, and yet I now understand that a farm is a once-wild place that was tamed for our pur- poses, part of an ecosystem that has often become broken or impoverished. Our fields are the coalface where we as a species meet the natural world, where our politics, our diet and our shopping choices shape the land, the wilder world around it, and even the climate. And we have often done great damage. I have come to understand that farming, even in the traditional ways, always has costs for the natural world - it is usually a downgrade on what might be there if humans weren't. But once we accept that, we can also see that good farmers do more than produce commodi- ties: through benign inefficiency or good stewardship, their farms can allow a great many wild things to live in and around them; holding water that would otherwise flow off the land and flood villages, towns and cities; and storing carbon that would otherwise alter the global climate. A good farm has a public value that transcends the pitiful price the farmer gets paid for his products."

"

"I have come to understand that even good farm- ers cannot single-handedly determine the fate of their farms. They have to rely on the shopping and voting choices of the rest of us to support and protect nature- friendly, sustainable agriculture. They need government spending and trade policies to recognize that sound farming is a 'public good', a thing that needs encour- aging and protecting. The marginalization of farming in our national pol- itics and culture is a tragedy because this is all about the kind of country we want to live in: a second-rate ver- sion of the broken American Midwest, or a land that reflects out own values, history, aspirations and nature. We won't become a country of good farming by simply drifting along as we have been, letting big business become ever more powerful and insisting on ever cheaper food in their supermarkets and shops. We have to take food much more seriously, viewing it not as a technical problem to be solved, but instead as something important in its own right, that enriches life. We need to think about how food was produced, and how our choices play out in fields somewhere. We were all responsible for the new industrial-style farming. We let it happen because we thought we wanted the sort of future it promised us. "

"

We have spent too long listening to economists. They said we shouldn't worry about local food because we had secure global supply chains. But even if that dubious claim were true (the world is much more volatile and vulnerable to human and natural crises than they admin), that isn't why local food matters. We need local farming so that we can understand it and engage with it, and shape it to our values. That means a significant share of our nutrition should be produced locally so we can see it, participate in it, and question and challenge it when we need to. Food production is too important to be pushed out of sight and out of mind. Foodstuffs from anonymous distant global sources are rarely subject to our rules and regulations on welfare, environment or hygiene, or produced in line with our values. We are so used to being disconnected from the fields and the people that feed us that we have forgotten how totally weird this is from a historic perspective. We should not be strangers to the fields that feed us. It is bad for us to get too far from the soil and the elements, and the tough realities that sustain us. There is now a mountain of evi- dence that people are healthier in body and mind when they do physical work and spend time outdoors and in contact with the natural world. The modern aspiration of lifting us up and away from elemental concerns and work on the land has turned out to be exactly the oppos- ite of what we really need."

"

What will our descendants say of us, years from now? How will we be judged? Will they stand in the dust of a scorched and hostile world, surrounded by the ruins of

all that exists today, and think that we, who could have saved the earth, were thoughtless vandals, too selfish or too stupid to turn back? Will the future know us as the generation who pushed everything too far, on whose watch the world began to fall apart, who had so little courage and wisdom that we turned away from our responsibilities? Or will they lie in the cool green light of the oak trees we planted and be proud of us, the gener- ation that pulled things back from the abyss, the generation that was brave enough to face up to our own flaws, big enough to overlook our differences and work together, and wise enough to see that life was about more than shop-bought things, a generation that rose above itself to build a better and more just world. This is our choice. We are at a fork in the road."

"

I hope my children and grandchildren will climb trees and build dens, catch fish and roam free the way we once did. I hope they will love our flocks and our culture and cherish the wild things. I am tired of abso- lutes and extremes and the angriness of this age. We need more kindness, compromise and balance. Everything good we have done on our farm has come from people finding ways to bridge the historic animosity between farmers and ecologists. The old freedom to do what we like as if each farm were an island, just a business, separate from all others, is now problematic. One appropriately chosen field of maize in a landscape may not be a major problem for soil ero- sion; all of the fields being planted with maize might be an ecological disaster. Ecology is bigger than one field and one farm. We need to work across many farms, and many valleys. If we know anything about ecosystems it is that they span whole landscapes, from sea to moun- tain top, from north to south and east to west and back, and encompass farms, valleys, regions and countries, even continents. The cuckoos that call from our oak trees for two months each spring come here from sub-Saharan Africa. They need many safe places to live and feed, and to be able to pass safely over as they migrate. The same applies to the swallows, swifts, stonechats, spotted flycatchers,

redstarts and many others. My farm is intricately linked to faraway places that I'll never visit, and over which have no influence. The fieldfares and redwings I love in my hedgerows all winter disappear one day each spring and fly north to the Arctic tundra and forests of Scandi- navia and northern Russia. They say the ravens that pass over our farm - and which strip the flesh from the dead sheep on our fell - sometimes fly north-east to gather and find mates, and to escape the cold spells, on the coasts of other countries like Denmark or Norway. But even on a more local scale, wild things move around between valleys and areas constantly. The curlews, oys- tercatchers and lapwings that grace our valley move between our fields and the mudflats of tidal estuaries in places like the Solway Firth and Morecambe Bay. The otters that leave their spraint (dung) marks on the rocks below my farmhouse have much larger territories and move up- and down-stream of our farm, covering many miles in a night. And the salmon and sea trout that flash silver in the pools of our becks spend much of their lives far out at sea dodging trawler nets and the mouths of killer whales. Our little farm is part of a very big world."

[brookston]

Holidays 3.16

Holidays

Austin 3:16 Day

Black Press Day

Curlew Day

Dandelion Day (French Republic)

Day After Dumbstruck Day

Day of the Book Smugglers (Lithuania)

Everything You Do Is Right Day

Freedom of Information Day

Goddard Day

Gumby Day

Halabja Massacre Anniversary Day (Turkey)

International Macaque Day

Latvian Legion Day (Latvia)

Liberty Day

Lips Appreciation Day (a.k.a. Love Your Lips Day)

The Lord’s Day

My Lai Day

National Archer Day

National Curl Crush Day

National Panda Day

National Red Cross Instructors Day

National Vaccination Day

No Selfies Day

Panda Day

Rachel Corrie Day

Rocket Day

Shattered Citadel Day

Stone Cold Day

St. Patrick’s Eve

Tell A Mockingbird To Shut Up Day

Vitamin C Day

West Point Day

Wild Spring Flower Festival (India)

World Theatre of the Oppressed Day

Young Careers Action Day (UK)

Food & Drink Celebrations

National Artichoke Hearts Day

National Lumpia Day

3rd Saturday in March

Digital Cleanup Day [3rd Saturday]

Girl Scout Sabbath [3rd Saturday]

International Sports Car Racing Day [3rd Saturday]

Maple Syrup Saturday [3rd Saturday]

National Corn Dog Day [3rd Saturday]

National Quilting Day [3rd Saturday]

National Tequila Day (Mexico) [3rd Saturday]

Recorder Day (a.k.a. Play the Recorder Day) [3rd Saturday]

Save the Florida Panther Day (Florida) [3rd Saturday]

World Blender Meetup Day [3rd Saturday]

World Whisky Day [3rd Saturday]

Worldwide Quilting Day [3rd Saturday]

Independence & Related Days

Aquedneck Constitution Day & Name Change to Rhode Island (1641)

Babikiria (Declared; 2019) [unrecognized]

Republic of Long Island (Declared; 2019) [unrecognized]

Festivals Beginning March 16, 2024

Armageddon Expo (Tauranga, New Zealand) [thru 3.17]

Bacchanalia begins (Ancient Rome)

Bay Area Travel & Adventure Show (Santa Clara, California) [thru 3.17]

Beer, Bourbon & BBQ Festival (Wilmington, North Carolina)

Capitol Market Green Chili Shootout (Charleston, South Carolina)

Hebron Maple Festival (Hebron, Connecticut) [thru 3.17]

Lewiston Sugar Festival (Clewiston, Florida)

MoCCA Arts Festival (New York, New York) [thru 3.17]

New York Maple Weekend (New Your statewide) [thru 3.17 & March 23-24]

Pecan and Wine Festival (Camp Verde, Arizona) [thru 3.17]

Popsicle Bridge Contest (Seattle, Washington)

Rocky Mountain Oyster Fry (Virginia City, Nevada)

Shrimpalooza (Homosasa, Florida)

St. Patrick’s Day Parade (Atlanta, Georgia)

St. Patrick’s Day Parade (Chicago, Illinois)

St. Patrick’s Day Parade (New York, New York)

St. Patrick’s Day Parade (Norfolk, Virginia)

St. Patrick’s Day Parade & Festival (San Diego, California)

Strumica Festival (Strumica, North Macedonia)

Sugar Camp Days (New Carlisle, Indiana) [thru 3.17]

taste Washington (Seattle, Washington) [thru 3.17]

Feast Days

Abbán (Christian; Saint)

Agapitus

Argei (Ancient Rome) [also 5.14]

The Day After Dumbstruck Day (Shamanism)

Dionysus' Day (Ancient Greece)

Elaphebolia (Festival of Artemis; Ancient Greece)

Epictetus (Positivist; Saint)

Feast of Bacchus (Ancient Greece)

Feat of the Hand of God (Goddess Iusaas or Iussaset at the Temple of Edfu; Ancient Egypt)

Finian Lobhar (a.k.a. Finian the Leper; Christian; Saint)

Great Cosmic Mother-of-All and You Day (Starza Pagan Book of Days)

Hammerhead Doozer (Muppetism)

Hercules Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Heribert of Cologne (Christian; Saint)

Hilarius of Aquileia (Christian; Saint)

Jean-Antoine Gros (Artology)

Julian of Antioch (a.k.a. of Cilicia; Christian; Saint)

Kinky Underwear Day (Pastafarian)

Lady of the Lake Day (Celtic Book of Days)

Rosa Bonheur (Artology)

Saturday of Souls, Second (Eastern Orthodox) [57 Days before Easter]

Urho (Christian; Saint) [Finnish Americans & Canadians]

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Lucky Day (Philippines) [34 of 71]

Tomobiki (友引 Japan) [Good luck all day, except at noon.]

Unfortunate Day (Pagan) [20 of 57]

Unglückstage (Unlucky Day; Pennsylvania Dutch) [12 of 30]

Very Unlucky Day (Grafton’s Manual of 1565) [15 of 60]

Premieres

The Absent-Minded Professor (Film; 1961)

Beatrice di Tenda, by Vincenzo Bellini (Opera; 1833)

Children of Dune (TV Mini-Series; 2003)

China Syndrome (Film; 1979)

Dog Watch (Disney Cartoon; 1945)

Ghost in the Shell (Film; 2017)

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, by Victor Hugo (Novel; 1831)

Justified (TV Series; 2010)

La Petite Parade (Modern Madcaps Cartoon; 1959)

The Man on the Flying Trapeze (Fleischer Popeye Cartoon; 1934)

Memento (Film; 2001)

Merry Mannequins (Color Rhapsody Cartoon; 1937)

Mickey’s Service Station (Disney Cartoon; 1935)

Pink Pistons (Pink Panther Cartoon; 1966)

The Saga of Windwagon Smith (Disney Cartoon; 1961)

The Scarlet Letter (Novel; 1850)

Thaïs, by Jules Massenet (Opera; 1894)

1776 (Broadway Musical; 1969)

Thank You, Jeeves, by P.G. Wodehouse (Novel; 1934) [Jeeves, #5]

Tomb Raider (Film; 2018)

Tops in the Big Top (Fleischer/Famous Popeye Cartoon; 1945)

The Trumpeter of Krakow, by Eric P. Kelly (Novel; 1928)

Tweety and the Beanstalk (WB MM Cartoon; 1957)

21 Jump Street (Film; 2012)

Wings of Life (Documentary Film; 2011)

You Only Live Twice, by Ian Fleming (Novel; 1959) [James Bond #12]

Today’s Name Days

Eduard, Herbert (Austria)

Euzebija, Hilarije, Julijan (Croatia)

Elena, Herbert (Czech Republic)

Gudmund (Denmark)

Heero, Herbert, Herbi (Estonia)

Ilkka (Finland)

Bénédicte (France)

Herbert, Rüdiger (Germany)

Christodoulos, Ioulianos (Greece)

Henrietta (Hungary)

Eriberto, Ilario, Taziano (Italy)

Gabriels, Guntars, Guntis (Latvia)

Henrika, Norvilė, Vaidotas (Lithuania)

Gudmund, Gudny (Norway)

Abraham, Cyriak, Henryka, Herbert, Hiacynt, Hilary, Izabela, Oktawia (Poland)

Sabin (Romania)

Boleslav (Slovakia)

Abraham, Abrahán, Heriberto (Spain)

Gilbert, Herbert (Sweden)

Savina (Ukraine)

Bailee, Bailey, Baylee, Bayley, Melisa, Melissa, Melita, Melyta, Millicent, Millie, Missy (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 76 of 2024; 290 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 6 of week 11 of 2024

Celtic Tree Calendar: Nuin (Ash) [Day 28 of 28]

Chinese: Month 2 (Ding-Mao), Day 7 (Ji-Mao)

Chinese Year of the: Dragon 4722 (until January 29, 2025)

Hebrew: 6 Adair II 5784

Islamic: 6 Ramadan 1445

J Cal: 16 Green; Twosday [16 of 30]

Julian: 3 March 2024

Moon: 50%: 1st Quarter

Positivist: 20 Aristotle (3rd Month) [Tacitus]

Runic Half Month: Beore (Birch Tree) [Day 7 of 15]

Season: Winter (Day 87 of 89)

Week: 2nd Week of March

Zodiac: Pisces (Day 27 of 30)

[bonefall]

Clanmew translations of some ocs

Petalsnow: Pfefiurch (Fluff petal-snow)

Snow prefix is supposed to mean snowfall

Hawkstep/star: Yi'issappa/Yi'ishai (Sparrowhawk-padding/star)

Not sure on the suffix

Rookstorm: Mraawbahahao (Crow-haster)

Doesn't seem to be a word for rook, went for haster because this man is a violent storm apparently

Willowmoon: Sawashowosha (Gray willow-moon halo)

Combined "shom" and "wosha" for the prefix, was very tempted to name them pussywillow but gray willow won in the end

Runningflame: Gabrllfyn (Crackling-cooking fire)

Sounds like a honor title tbh, this man can cook

Stoneclaw: Bponbkach (Boulder-claw)

She's a big woman, so big stone word it is

Monkeyfoot: Kossachungpwyyarr (Tree monster-foot)

Combination of "kossa" and "kichung" for the prefix, meant to be the generic term for certain animals. He'd likely have a honor title like Monkeyscar

Thundershine: Krrakashemimi (Thunder-has shined)

Meant to symbolize that lightning has hit and thunder will come soon

Splinterstripe: Karkseek (Chip-long stripe)

Couldn't find splinter so chip it is, neither of the stripe words really fit them but I went with seek because it sounds better

Piperleap/star: Krekekluara/Krekekshai (Gray heron-has jumped/star)

Piper wasn't on the lexicon so I just went for a bird word that began with K to match with their siblings. The leap part of their name symbolizes their shift from cleric training to becoming a warrior

Tinybounce: Eebpipip (Small-bouncing) or Peskepipip (small cluster of flowers-bouncing)

Little guy, so smol. Second translation was literally made because it fits with zir family's names so well (such as petal and rose)

Runningflame/Crackling-Cookingfire/Gabrilfyn is absolutely my favorite, TOTALLY sounds like an honor title, 100% excellent

Here's some more words for you! While I'm at it, I'll fill out the missing corvids;

Rook (Corvus frugilegus) = Naahg

Jackdaw (Corvus monedula) = Niw

Hooded Crow (Corvus cornix) = Aai

Red-billed Chough (Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax) = Hraor

This, with Nyok for Raven, Rawk for Carrion Crow, Ke'ek for Magpie, and Mraaw for Corvids as a generic term, completes the entire family!

Next is a few wood-related terms that are missing;

Splinter = Koa

Wood (General) = Okok

Pith (The spongy inner wood of plants, usually in reference to flax or soft rush) = Sowa

And lastly... on pipers.

Pipers are a rare bird for Clan cats to see. They're mostly shorebirds that come in-land to nest. There's well over a dozen fat, thin-billed, long-legged little waterbirds (called Waders) they see on a regular basis, but the two piper species they'd know about would be very rare.

So here's a generic term for you, and a couple of the most common ones. I found a good way to give you a K-term while most of this family has peepy-type calls;

Wader (Generic) = Kikaboo From Fang + Beak + Fat. Includes rails, coots, pipers, dunlins, etc. Birds with long legs, long little beaks like a tooth, and round bodies, found near water.

Beak (of a bird) = Kaba

Moorhen = Ia The most common wader in the territory. The closest thing to a chicken the Clan cats have.

Curlew (Numenius arquata) = Urloop An interesting little bird that nests close to kestrel nests, in spite of the danger. Featured in a Clanmew saying, "Curlew in the shadow of a kestrel," roughly means, "Choosing danger for the sake of safety"

Little Ringed Plover (Charadrius dubius) = Bieew A symbol of peace between RiverClan and WindClan in the Lake territory. The southern delta is mostly gravel and stony, the exact place that a Bieew likes to nest. Both Clans have an interest in protecting these pretty little birds, which can bring them together for negotiation.

Common Sandpiper (Actitis hypoleucos) = Peepapi A rare shore-dwelling bird that occasionally comes in-land to nest; not discovered until the Clan cats returned to the Lake. When used as a name, has a connotation of traveling or going on a salt patrol.

[brookstonalmanac]

Holidays 3.16

Holidays

Austin 3:16 Day

Black Press Day

Curlew Day

Dandelion Day (French Republic)

Day After Dumbstruck Day

Day of the Book Smugglers (Lithuania)

Everything You Do Is Right Day

Freedom of Information Day

Goddard Day

Gumby Day

Halabja Massacre Anniversary Day (Turkey)

International Macaque Day

Latvian Legion Day (Latvia)

Liberty Day

Lips Appreciation Day (a.k.a. Love Your Lips Day)

The Lord’s Day

My Lai Day

National Archer Day

National Curl Crush Day

National Panda Day

National Red Cross Instructors Day

National Vaccination Day

No Selfies Day

Panda Day

Rachel Corrie Day

Rocket Day

Shattered Citadel Day

Stone Cold Day

St. Patrick’s Eve

Tell A Mockingbird To Shut Up Day

Vitamin C Day

West Point Day

Wild Spring Flower Festival (India)

World Theatre of the Oppressed Day

Young Careers Action Day (UK)

Food & Drink Celebrations

National Artichoke Hearts Day

National Lumpia Day

3rd Saturday in March

Digital Cleanup Day [3rd Saturday]

Girl Scout Sabbath [3rd Saturday]

International Sports Car Racing Day [3rd Saturday]

Maple Syrup Saturday [3rd Saturday]

National Corn Dog Day [3rd Saturday]

National Quilting Day [3rd Saturday]

National Tequila Day (Mexico) [3rd Saturday]

Recorder Day (a.k.a. Play the Recorder Day) [3rd Saturday]

Save the Florida Panther Day (Florida) [3rd Saturday]

World Blender Meetup Day [3rd Saturday]

World Whisky Day [3rd Saturday]

Worldwide Quilting Day [3rd Saturday]

Independence & Related Days

Aquedneck Constitution Day & Name Change to Rhode Island (1641)

Babikiria (Declared; 2019) [unrecognized]

Republic of Long Island (Declared; 2019) [unrecognized]

Festivals Beginning March 16, 2024

Armageddon Expo (Tauranga, New Zealand) [thru 3.17]

Bacchanalia begins (Ancient Rome)

Bay Area Travel & Adventure Show (Santa Clara, California) [thru 3.17]

Beer, Bourbon & BBQ Festival (Wilmington, North Carolina)

Capitol Market Green Chili Shootout (Charleston, South Carolina)

Hebron Maple Festival (Hebron, Connecticut) [thru 3.17]

Lewiston Sugar Festival (Clewiston, Florida)

MoCCA Arts Festival (New York, New York) [thru 3.17]

New York Maple Weekend (New Your statewide) [thru 3.17 & March 23-24]

Pecan and Wine Festival (Camp Verde, Arizona) [thru 3.17]

Popsicle Bridge Contest (Seattle, Washington)

Rocky Mountain Oyster Fry (Virginia City, Nevada)

Shrimpalooza (Homosasa, Florida)

St. Patrick’s Day Parade (Atlanta, Georgia)

St. Patrick’s Day Parade (Chicago, Illinois)

St. Patrick’s Day Parade (New York, New York)

St. Patrick’s Day Parade (Norfolk, Virginia)

St. Patrick’s Day Parade & Festival (San Diego, California)

Strumica Festival (Strumica, North Macedonia)

Sugar Camp Days (New Carlisle, Indiana) [thru 3.17]

taste Washington (Seattle, Washington) [thru 3.17]

Feast Days

Abbán (Christian; Saint)

Agapitus

Argei (Ancient Rome) [also 5.14]

The Day After Dumbstruck Day (Shamanism)

Dionysus' Day (Ancient Greece)

Elaphebolia (Festival of Artemis; Ancient Greece)

Epictetus (Positivist; Saint)

Feast of Bacchus (Ancient Greece)

Feat of the Hand of God (Goddess Iusaas or Iussaset at the Temple of Edfu; Ancient Egypt)

Finian Lobhar (a.k.a. Finian the Leper; Christian; Saint)

Great Cosmic Mother-of-All and You Day (Starza Pagan Book of Days)

Hammerhead Doozer (Muppetism)

Hercules Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Heribert of Cologne (Christian; Saint)

Hilarius of Aquileia (Christian; Saint)

Jean-Antoine Gros (Artology)

Julian of Antioch (a.k.a. of Cilicia; Christian; Saint)

Kinky Underwear Day (Pastafarian)

Lady of the Lake Day (Celtic Book of Days)

Rosa Bonheur (Artology)

Saturday of Souls, Second (Eastern Orthodox) [57 Days before Easter]

Urho (Christian; Saint) [Finnish Americans & Canadians]

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Lucky Day (Philippines) [34 of 71]

Tomobiki (友引 Japan) [Good luck all day, except at noon.]

Unfortunate Day (Pagan) [20 of 57]

Unglückstage (Unlucky Day; Pennsylvania Dutch) [12 of 30]

Very Unlucky Day (Grafton’s Manual of 1565) [15 of 60]

Premieres

The Absent-Minded Professor (Film; 1961)

Beatrice di Tenda, by Vincenzo Bellini (Opera; 1833)

Children of Dune (TV Mini-Series; 2003)

China Syndrome (Film; 1979)

Dog Watch (Disney Cartoon; 1945)

Ghost in the Shell (Film; 2017)

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, by Victor Hugo (Novel; 1831)

Justified (TV Series; 2010)

La Petite Parade (Modern Madcaps Cartoon; 1959)

The Man on the Flying Trapeze (Fleischer Popeye Cartoon; 1934)

Memento (Film; 2001)

Merry Mannequins (Color Rhapsody Cartoon; 1937)

Mickey’s Service Station (Disney Cartoon; 1935)

Pink Pistons (Pink Panther Cartoon; 1966)

The Saga of Windwagon Smith (Disney Cartoon; 1961)

The Scarlet Letter (Novel; 1850)

Thaïs, by Jules Massenet (Opera; 1894)

1776 (Broadway Musical; 1969)

Thank You, Jeeves, by P.G. Wodehouse (Novel; 1934) [Jeeves, #5]

Tomb Raider (Film; 2018)

Tops in the Big Top (Fleischer/Famous Popeye Cartoon; 1945)

The Trumpeter of Krakow, by Eric P. Kelly (Novel; 1928)

Tweety and the Beanstalk (WB MM Cartoon; 1957)

21 Jump Street (Film; 2012)

Wings of Life (Documentary Film; 2011)

You Only Live Twice, by Ian Fleming (Novel; 1959) [James Bond #12]

Today’s Name Days

Eduard, Herbert (Austria)

Euzebija, Hilarije, Julijan (Croatia)

Elena, Herbert (Czech Republic)

Gudmund (Denmark)

Heero, Herbert, Herbi (Estonia)

Ilkka (Finland)

Bénédicte (France)

Herbert, Rüdiger (Germany)

Christodoulos, Ioulianos (Greece)

Henrietta (Hungary)

Eriberto, Ilario, Taziano (Italy)

Gabriels, Guntars, Guntis (Latvia)

Henrika, Norvilė, Vaidotas (Lithuania)

Gudmund, Gudny (Norway)

Abraham, Cyriak, Henryka, Herbert, Hiacynt, Hilary, Izabela, Oktawia (Poland)

Sabin (Romania)

Boleslav (Slovakia)

Abraham, Abrahán, Heriberto (Spain)

Gilbert, Herbert (Sweden)

Savina (Ukraine)

Bailee, Bailey, Baylee, Bayley, Melisa, Melissa, Melita, Melyta, Millicent, Millie, Missy (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 76 of 2024; 290 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 6 of week 11 of 2024

Celtic Tree Calendar: Nuin (Ash) [Day 28 of 28]

Chinese: Month 2 (Ding-Mao), Day 7 (Ji-Mao)

Chinese Year of the: Dragon 4722 (until January 29, 2025)

Hebrew: 6 Adair II 5784

Islamic: 6 Ramadan 1445

J Cal: 16 Green; Twosday [16 of 30]

Julian: 3 March 2024

Moon: 50%: 1st Quarter

Positivist: 20 Aristotle (3rd Month) [Tacitus]

Runic Half Month: Beore (Birch Tree) [Day 7 of 15]

Season: Winter (Day 87 of 89)

Week: 2nd Week of March

Zodiac: Pisces (Day 27 of 30)