Jen Ratcliffe
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jenratcliffe.bsky.social
Jen Ratcliffe
@jenratcliffe.bsky.social
2.7K followers 550 following 1K posts
✏️Writer
Boating birder and travelling poet, loves a good brew ☕ Host of #DailyNature

🌿Nature 🚂Travel
🛶Canals 🌊Nomad

WC Nature Writing Shortlist 24
Porthleven Finalist 23

IntrepidTimes WaterwaysWorld Telegraph

#NatureWriting
#UKCanals
#NaturePoetry
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jenratcliffe.bsky.social
There's a king fisher in this photo I promise 😂

- one for your #birdsfromfaraway @charliebingham.bsky.social ? Maybe more of a #WheresWallyBirds

#Birds #UKCanals
A canal dirt towpath amid green verge and distant white barrier bridge with bordering stark trees.
November 18, 2025 at 3:38 PM
jenratcliffe.bsky.social
#Shelfy for the booklovers
Three shelves showing various vintage titles, mainly adventure for young adults, such as 'The Pilates of Pomona - Robert Leighton' a pink squat book with a sky blue medallion illustration of a pilot on its spine.
November 14, 2025 at 6:01 PM
jenratcliffe.bsky.social
Hedge Vetch

This year is the first year I noticed that there seems to be a purple season. Everything goes purple before it goes gold, rolling over the ground between summer and autumn like living twilight.

@wildflowerhour.bsky.social #wildflowerhour
Amongst tear shaped green leaves and long limbed grasses pokes the remaining petals of pink hedge Vetch, a small trumpet like flower contrasting with its surroundings.
November 9, 2025 at 8:04 PM
jenratcliffe.bsky.social
This is my 1000th post on BlueSky 💙

Nature is graffiti to the soul, to the silence,
to those who would take her and bend her into misuse,
she is scrappy and scrawl,
without erasure,
every element contains her, words written in senses, in existence
and endless style.

#NatureWriting #DailyNature
A woman with mousy auburn curls sands beside water. Her eyes are darkened rowan berries that match her lipstick.
November 7, 2025 at 4:33 PM
jenratcliffe.bsky.social
Happy #WorldJellyfishDay, this scrawny sketch is inspired by a compass jellyfish which you can find native to the UK

#nature
Ontop of a beige and red scarf is a sketchbook with a multicoloured jellyfish sketched on. It has thick curly tendrils and long whisky ones as well as a semi translucent round head with an almost flower shape on.
November 3, 2025 at 8:01 PM
jenratcliffe.bsky.social
I was full of intention to do all of #Inktober this month, but I ended up only doing animals & forgetting to post any of them 🫣

So here is a Roe deer - who haunts the fields near Staffs & Worcester sections of canals, barking into the nights factory thick air like a banshee

#Inktober #Nature #Deer
Stop a red and beige scarf sits a notebook with a pen drawn roe deer in red, orange, yellows and highlights of blue - leaping from one corner to another.
October 31, 2025 at 1:53 PM
jenratcliffe.bsky.social
I didn't take a picture of my lunch but can I offer what we've been living off for a few weeks now instead?

- crumble, stuffed roast, sauce, jam, jelly, sticky loaf, baked with goats cheese, cinnamon topped in porridge with brunøst - raw in your hand from a tree? You maniac! (Crunches into one)
October 30, 2025 at 9:51 PM
jenratcliffe.bsky.social
When water becomes sky, does that make us the fish?

#NatureWriting #NaturePhotography #DailyNature
#Water
Delamere, Cheshire - two lichenous lumps of tree stumps poke out of what seems like blue sky and drifting clouds. Now the sky is at an angle and we see many drowned tree hands grasping for real air
October 28, 2025 at 11:24 AM
jenratcliffe.bsky.social
I've been told to practise reading poetry in public. So today I did a nerve-wracking thing...

To ease myself into this I chose Mary Oliver's words. Like a friend guiding me painting and so here they are

Book club link:

open.substack.com/pub/jenratcl...

#MaryOliver #Aqua #Books #NaturePoetry
October 27, 2025 at 7:09 PM
jenratcliffe.bsky.social
The sky has truly broken this afternoon. The fire is stoked and a thousand invisible feet are dancing on the canal.

Here is a preview of my piece on our first autumn aboard, available to listen as you get cosy...

Here↘️
jenratcliffe.substack.com/p/mooring-in...

#podcast #cosy #fireside #storytime
October 23, 2025 at 3:50 PM
jenratcliffe.bsky.social
#WildFlowerHour

Spindle tree splicing like mini macaroons
On a long thin stem of tear drops emerald green leaves are clusters of magenta spherical pods with shining magma middles splitting and unfolding within.
October 19, 2025 at 7:03 PM
jenratcliffe.bsky.social
An abundance of elf's wood - fly agaric mushrooms in threes, twenties. Deep vermilion and papaya, wonky white windows and long sturdy stems. My sister leads me onward, each specimen placed in her mind like a bookmark for my return. We are eight once more, looking for magic.

#NatureWriting
Three staggered burnt orange toadstools with square cream patterned dots poke through a brown leafy floor. Fly agaric.
October 10, 2025 at 10:53 PM
jenratcliffe.bsky.social
At what point does the tree discern the bend in its elbow and to rest permanently so, like a welcoming arm of a long lost friend?

#NatureWriting
Beneath a celeste blue sky and peridot wooded back drop, a dark tangerine bark of a Scots pine curves from centre to left slowly.
October 8, 2025 at 9:45 AM
jenratcliffe.bsky.social
Hello #fungifriends - could anyone help ID?

I thought it might be a young fly agaric but redlead Roundhead is also coming up. Merci!

#NatureWriting #Nature
An orange-red mushroom cap, wide and comical - lighter in the middle, pokes out from damp leafy woodland floor. The same red capped mushroom from the side, showing a skinny white stem
October 7, 2025 at 9:38 AM
jenratcliffe.bsky.social
Heartwarming weekend at MA Nature & Travel Writing @bathspauni.bsky.social reunion 💚 so glad I joined this course 🌿 A main goal for was to final a community and here we are, fulfilled.

Thanks again to @stephenmossauthor.bsky.social @gailsimmons.bsky.social , @amandatuke.bsky.social & Jon Lorie
At a podium infront of a silhouetted crowd Jon Lorie, the new course director of MA Nature & Travel Writing Bath Spa, introduces speeches of success, rallies and appreciation. At Bath Royal Literary & Science Institute (written on a power point behind).
October 6, 2025 at 3:01 PM
jenratcliffe.bsky.social
#Day29 #DailyNature

St Michaels day today - don't forget to check the fields for acorns and should they be littered with them then come the 25th December they'll be littered with snow!

#Folklore
A brown leafy floor under strands of green hairs of grass. In the centre are acorns, some brown with their bumpy hats on, others larger glowing cerulean.
September 29, 2025 at 4:44 PM
jenratcliffe.bsky.social
#Day26 #DailyNature

Deceptively rough curls of rosebay willowherb peel into second life. Away from delicate soft pink ringlets into splintered barbed wire pencil shavings. As cotton tail hearts, light as feathers, escape to new burrows of life.

#NatureWriting
#CanalPlants
#FlowerPower
Infront of a blue sky and green meadow, a rosebay willow herb stands. At the top it's pink tubular petals stick like fine needles, halfway down the stem these have split into criss-crossing yellowed hard shells like loose yarn.
September 26, 2025 at 7:57 PM
jenratcliffe.bsky.social
#DailyNature

Gold ripples into rosey blue underneath autumn's dusk percussion.

Roosting, false migrations, parliamentary chuckles. Long tailed tit gives punctuation to persistent trickles of chipper robin, stuttering moorhen. Ending on sombre wayfarers: blackbird and magpie

#NatureWriting #Sunset
September 24, 2025 at 6:39 PM
jenratcliffe.bsky.social
Been past this a few times on my walks recently and wondering if anyone can Identify?

As far as I can tell they are natural objects - but I wasn't really confident in this. My initial thoughts were horse related as it's on the towpath but perhaps it's just an old fence stump 🤷‍♀️

#Nature
Amidst leafy greens and a muddled towpath sits two sunk objects. One is a cream rectangular object with a pale ridge in its middle, the edges are curved like a bone. The other is a deeply sunken circular object that is brown with dirt. On its flat top are conical patterns, 10+ raised and ringed. Closer to the white rectangular object we see it is more of an L shape , the split ridge is where the L bottom protrudes to the left. The edges are waved and grey almost like metal, the remaining is Rosey brown with mud. The flat circular sunken object almost looks like a fossil. Some of the rings are complete circles with neat lines like tree rings, others are more corroded and bumpy towards its edge.
September 24, 2025 at 2:18 PM
jenratcliffe.bsky.social
#DailyNature

Something about this gaffa taped, natural-material, manufactured, coconut in northern England, bird feeder, strapped to the thinnest branch, amongst public footpath - made me reason 'that's us humans in nature; trying, not-trying, failing, succeeding, all at once'

#NatureWriting
Rowan branches with berries to the left, rosehips to the away right, part to an electric blue sky. In the middle a half husk of a coconut looking like a brown tennis ball is strapped to a skinny pale branch with silver hard-wearing tape and a rough rope braid. #ALTTEXTISPOETRY
September 23, 2025 at 9:39 AM
jenratcliffe.bsky.social
#Day22 #DailyNature

A crystal black sky emerges swiftly as a tawny owl calls it's flame flickering whistles. Autumn has settled in. Berries bauble bushes heavy and glistening in starlight, whilst dew gathers despite a fat sun day. Merry equinox 🍁

#NatureWriting #sunset #Reflection #Photography
Diagonally we see the silhouette of trees, possible ash and elder. They are doubled due to reflection making a tree shape overall. To each side is a lingering sunset, Sahara yellow near the trees fading softly to slate blue.
September 22, 2025 at 7:49 PM
jenratcliffe.bsky.social
#Day17 #DailyNature

The blackbird is resting in red rowan again.

Whose hue changes in light, crimson curved in morning to punch pink at night. Which hue wards off witches? And how could magic detract magic?

If protection is a spell, then surely there's witch within the wood?

#folk
September 17, 2025 at 11:43 AM
jenratcliffe.bsky.social
#Day14 #DailyNature

This weather sounds like a thousand hedgehogs rolling over pots and pans. It's actually a ruckus of velocity and volume of softly malleable water. It lands tenderly, without cracking spider-spun circles. Makes spectral glitter, like a Christmas decoration.

#NatureWriting
A glossy window looking out onto blurred green trees and peach-murky water. A spiders web can be seen in cross sections of shining droplets. At the centre a mobile phone is reflected in the capture.
September 14, 2025 at 2:30 PM
jenratcliffe.bsky.social
#Day13 Lucky for some #DailyNature

I'm in awe of this sky, it's vast and huge and I am but a raindrop in the orb. I grew up with flat expanses, nostalgia flecks the clouds. So I remind myself that so much sky might be telling me something else about nature, yet I can't look away.

#NatureWriting
A sky with deeply torn in sapphire blue, cracked with periwinkle, bubblegum and ice tones amidst candyfloss tinted and feathered clouds. Reflected in shade below in a flat canal.
September 13, 2025 at 12:21 PM
jenratcliffe.bsky.social
#Day12 #DailyNature

How soon the blackberry
sings tartly on gums
crimson over pink -
only yesterday it was mute
muffled in marshmallow skirts
set like a pentagram.
So this is how a star grows
in nobbled clusters of multi dimension
It's final sound: that of the taster
or crisp rustling waste.

#poem
A peridot background of overlapping leaves with a thorny branch in the middle and several clusters of soft round blackberries sit in different stages of growth. Some still red, others glossy black and the final few crisply turning to dust.
September 12, 2025 at 9:55 PM