@flygirlnhm.bsky.social This handsome hoverfly landed next to me in the garden and I thought of you

A nightjar churring on Haddon Hill, Somerset. One of four recorded last night in my #BTO Nightjar Survey square

@flygirlnhm.bsky.social is this one of yours?

Just completed 4 hours on a small patch of Exmoor doing the #BTO Heathland Bird Survey. Won’t say if I recorded my target species but did have a close encounter with a hare. Plus cuckoo, grasshopper warbler, many linnets, redpolls and skylarks.

Scene from my #BTO Waterways Breeding Bird Survey along the River Tone at Greenham, Somerset this morning. Highlights: kingfisher & spotted flycatcher. Downers: no dipper and no grey wagtail (both recorded in 24 & 23)

Dartford warbler, Somerset. Not an easy bird to photograph with two impatient dogs vying for my attention.

Great white egret at Shapwick Heath Nature Reserve on the #SomersetLevels today

Not a great photo but it is a moment from 5 mins of pure joy today watching a lesser spotted woodpecker: foraging, drumming and calling overhead in a bitterly cold wood on the Quantocks. No bigger than a sparrow. Never seen one in the UK before and only once fleetingly in Romania.

Teal on the River Otter estuary this morning

If resident species only, mine are:
* Dipper (love what natural selection can do with a song bird)
* Curlew (monarch of our waders plus the song and calls)
* Dartford warbler (longed to see these beauties for many years & now common on my patch).
Can't rank them. Feeling bad for the barn owl

Episode includes a great story from Johnson Space Center senior engineer Ivy Hooks on her fight to redesign Solid Rocket Booster Separation to prevent "them destroying the orbiter with subsystems." #womeninspace