ChrisGibsonWildlife

Refugee from Twitter. Been here a while, but please visit my website for regular blogs about the natural world and the places I have the good fortune to visit chrisgibsonwildlife.co.uk

"Let them eat gherkins".

Second blog (of three) from our recent Interrail extravaganza... Eating and drinking our way across Europe: three days in Trieste. www.chrisgibsonwildlife.co.uk/eating-drink... Train travel, sights, wildlife and a whole lot more #NatureWriting

Bolsonaro's loss is not just a loss for Bolsonaro. It's a loss for Trump. For Musk. For Milei. For Netanyahu. For Farage. For Meta and Zuckerberg. For the meat barons, the fossil fuel corporations, and the rest of the neocolonial looters. And it is a massive win for humanity and the living planet.

A heads up on my forthcoming book: Where the Wild Things Live. Available: late November. A search for species, from lichens to mammals & from moths to fungi, in an ordinary garden. How many species would you find in your garden? More details markavery.info/my-new-book-...

Victory for Lula, who has already reduced Amazon deforestation by 70% since 2022, means there is now a chance of ending deforestation of the rainforest entirely I’m weeping with joy for Brazil, for the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon, and for life on Earth 🇧🇷🌳🌎 www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...

Reform and Tories have pledged to reverse ULEZ repeatedly.

Absolutely FABULOUS news for all life on Earth, especially the Amazon rainforest!!!! Despite the fascists playing every dirty, cheating trick in the book to steal this election, the people of Brazil saw through the lies. So, so, happy and relieved this morning 🇧🇷 👏 share.google/UdpzcSkD5us7...

I would like my free movement back, which was taken away by Brexit. To be able to live, work, retire freely again on the vast county we all share.

Google plans to bulldoze a wildlife haven in Essex – home to rare species – for a data centre. Sign the petition now to help save it before it’s gone forever 🐝🦋 you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/sa...

Balloon and lantern releases create litter and #plasticpollution in landscapes and seas that can harm the environment, wildlife and livestock. Celebrate special occasions and loved ones by planting trees, wildflowers, or bee and butterfly gardens instead! Pic via Keep Britain Tidy

Right now, the UK government has a crucial chance to ban glyphosate from public spaces and garden centres, but they’ll only step up if enough of us make our voices heard. It only takes 2 minutes. Thanks! act.gp/3WpxIot

Looking out from our eyrie in Wivenhoe right now, there is a sundog to the right of the setting sun, and it has now bifurcated!

Removing motor traffic from city centre streets creates places where people linger, relax, dine and enjoy being outside. Places where families can safely ride their bikes, people of all ages can get safely around, and where streets are dominated by people, not cars.

First blog (of three) from our recent Interrail extravaganza... Eating and drinking our way across Europe. www.chrisgibsonwildlife.co.uk/eating-drink... Train travel, sights, wildlife and a whole lot more #NatureWriting

The UK shouldn’t tinker around the edges with joining the EU Single Market or Customs Union, do we want to be a rule-taker or do we want to be at the European top table making the rules. Let’s start on the road to rejoining. Brexit has utterly and completely failed.

Mr Healey - you are an ignorant, short-sighted, fool Have you taken any time to look around you - to see and understand what is happening to our world? There is NO growth on a dying planet www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I don't follow this account, because I can't bear to, but it shows up in my feed every day, and I'm so glad it exists, because we need to be told, and shown, *every damn day*, exactly where all this shit leads us. Exactly where. Down to all the little kids' birthdays and all the little shoes.

Good, but wouldn’t it be nice if we all had the right to live, work, and retire anywhere on the vast continent we share? Time to #Rejoin

Booking is now live for the 2026 British & Irish Botanical Conference: www.tickettailor.com/events/botan... Join us at @nhm-london.bsky.social on 28 Nov for botanical talks, exhibits, panel discussion, herbarium tours, networking, wildflower seed giveaways, ID quiz, authors, latest research & more!

Yet golf courses are still permitted to water their greens Just unbelievable www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026... As long as it tolerates sick bastards like this, the USA is a lost cause for civilization, humanity, democracy and reason.

This is why I don’t use Twitter/X. This is why I don’t drive a Tesla. This is why I don’t use Starlink. This is why I don’t have Tesla power at home. This is why I declined a job inquiry from Neuralink. All the dollars that are going to those companies support an absolute monstrosity of a man.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Lots of insects depend on ivy flowers for survival....don't cut ivy!

A couple of wildside walks today for the special National Garden Scheme day at Beth Chatto Gardens in lovely weather. Highlights were the slime mould Fuligo septica and two Ectophasia crassipennis, an internal parasite-fly of shieldbugs. First seen here last October: only half a dozen Essex records.

Lovely to see my interview about all things Wild Pavements & #urbannature on the YHA blog. Such a fab organisation. www.yha.org.uk/blog/discove...

A bunch of weeny early-instar Southern Green Shieldbug nymphs in Harwich during the shanty festival this weekend. In Essex we have only ever seen the species along Thamesside and in the Lea Valley. The NBN has a couple of Suffolk records, but still very much at the edge of its range here.

I just checked his X account. Not a word from Farageski...

In the least surprising news of the century, vast majority of racist flag shaggers who go about brandishing crosses and saying that we're a Christian country... don't pray, or go to church or read the Bible www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...

Still think that filthy scum #Trump isn't a Russian asset? President Zelensky is a better, greater man than that traitorous halfwit could ever even dream of being. Slava Ukraini! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

We have been among wonderful sights, sounds, food and drink for the past 9 days interrailing across Europe to Trieste and back, 3162km and 33hours on trains, without a hitch. There will be blogs! Eventually!! But here's out last overnighter, Dijon. So lovely I'd like to live there!

Heading across Europe by train, we just crossed the alps and have rocked up in Trieste. Eating and drinking and looking and enjoying our way across the continent! A blog will be on its way on our return

And rough grassland, scrub, woodland edges and clearings can be more valuable, dependent on the species in the area. Not everything needs canopy.

Why must it always be about planting trees, when they managed just fine for 100s of millions of years before people came along? Just let them seed out. Yes, planting does have a role, but so often the underlying subtext is continued human domination of nature. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Couldn't agree more. I like trees, but wetland wins every time.

My latest blog post: Warted Amanita, Amanita strobiliformis. A big, chunky and distinctive mushroom, often found quite early in the fungus season. www.jeremybartlett.co.uk/2026/09/30/w... #Fungi #FungiFriends

Bl@@dy hymns! I’m so glad you keep speaking up about this, I agree entirely with your stance

Reform want to indoctrinate our children. Freedom of (and from) belief is a human right. humanists.uk/2026/09/10/s...

Ivy is a really good source of diptera, including hoverflies, and bees at this time of year Besides Honey bees today there were lots of Ivy bees along with Calliphora vomitoria, Myathropa flora, Eristalis tenax etc

Ah, thanks Chris!

Very pleased to have helped put my home town Wivenhoe on the discerning visitors' map. www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/desti... @@naturetrek.bsky.social It was my swansong, but they have persuaded me do do a couple of encores.

Not a wasp or a hornet, but a hornet-mimicking hoverfly! Volucella zonaria is the largest hoverfly species in the UK, first spotted in southern England in the 1930s and gradually expanding its range northwards.

Indeed. Yay for shieldbugs!

Please can I share my enthusiasm for hairy shieldbugs with you in my @theguardian.com country diary this morning? They are so cool! 😍 #naturewriting #countrydiary @chrismothman.bsky.social

Today I found my first seabean. This seed has travelled a long way to reach #Shetland. Starting it's journey in a tropical forest, travelling with ocean currents and washing up with our first autumn storms. A little piece of luck and joy to hold onto as daylight fades and winter approaches.

New blog of our mission to explore our near world in mote detail than ever before using only our bus passes Coggeshall, only 20 minutes by car from home, but always bypassed, never the destination. Until earlier this week! www.chrisgibsonwildlife.co.uk/to-coggeshal... #NatureWriting

Just look at the sunset we just had from our lofty perch in Wivenhoe Shipyard!

I return to the images over and again: 3 years ago today, Brutalism, blue sky, water, rust and autumn. My favourite bridge ever, the zigzag bridge in Harlow.