Matt Smith

AI slop

A bleak, stark oil painting in shades of brown and cream of waterlogged fields under a flat white sky dotted with bare elm trees

Other work of the Ladybird artists.
‘February Fill Dyke’
Artist: Rowland Hilder

むしろ食べてくれ YouTube video by でんか@海洋生物観測所

youtube.com/shorts/diejO...

Yes, and I have been for some time

KFC, Nando's, and others ditch chicken welfare pledge as demand soars Wingstop, Burger King, and others have walked away from an industry commitment to avoid using fast-growing chickens

KFC, Nando's, Burger King and others ditch chicken welfare pledge.

It is about profits.

They prefer "franken-chickens" which mature quicker but have higher rates of premature death and muscle disease.

What are people eating?

Customers not told anything about chicken welfare.

Illustration of a singing Eurasian wren. Text next to the bird: The Eurasian wren (Troglodytes troglodytes) is one of the smallest and loudest birds of Europe. It weighs about 9 g and can be heard at a distance of up to 500 m.

Let’s spread a nice bird fact in the Bluesky universe! 🪶

Illustration by Maja Mielke. Ballpoint pen on paper, colorized digitally in #Krita.

#sciart #birdart #digitalillustration #illustration #natureart

Red eyes and black beaches: How the Sea Empress disaster left its mark A major oil spill which killed thousands of birds is still being debated, three decades later.

“More than 70,000 tonnes - or 32 Olympic-sized swimming pools worth - of oil had spilled into the sea, affecting an estimated 200km (124 miles) of coastline”.

#nature #seaempressdisaster #environmentalpollution

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Fig. 1 Geographic distribution of phenological observation sites across Europe captured in the PEP725 database.

✨ Paper spotlight ✨

(🧵 1/7) PEP725: Fifteen Years of Driving European and Global Phenology Science
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Shot of Photographer Looming Over an Owl Highlights Growing Problem 'It's kind of awful what some photographers do for 14 likes on Facebook.'

Shot of Photographer Looming Over an Owl Highlights Growing Problem | PetaPixel share.google/6I3lwKZf6RkE...

Is that black letters on orange? If so, it could be one of ours from Worcestershire. I’m struggling to make out the letters.

Crepuscular you say?
Same location, as darkness falls - just before / just after
#Wrens #LittleOwls #Birds #Nature

Stop Palantir taking over our public services! Our public services aren’t for a secretive profit-hungry US tech firm. Sign the petition to tell the Government to scrap all contracts with secretive US tech firm Palantir.

Our public services aren’t for a secretive profit-hungry US tech firm. Sign the petition to tell the Government to scrap all contracts with secretive US tech firm Palantir. you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/st...

Last week students from the #UniversityofWorcester and #HeartofWorcestershireCollege rolled up their sleeves and helped to plant a new woodland with our #WilderWorcestershire team at #ChapterMeadows. 🌳

Find out more in our next podcast episode dropping on 6 March!🎙️

#HeritageFund #NationalLottery

Painting of wren perched by nest surrounded with clover, snowdrops, ivy, moss and ferns.

Artist unknown, Wren, snowdrops, moss and ivy.

The psychology of collapse and the solution, why the UK climate crisis feels ‘normal’ now Last in our series: politicians normalise disaster, people develop crisis fatigue – the solution: climate resilience that actually works

“There is the ‘Official Reality,’ where everything is fine and the government has a plan, and the ‘Physical Reality,’ where the insurance market is collapsing and the harvest is failing”.

#climatecrisis #noplanetb #climatechange

northwestbylines.co.uk/environment/...

A close-up illustration looking down on a falcon in flight over mountains in a cloudy blue sky

‘Peregrine’
Birds of Prey, 1970
Artist: John Leigh-Pemberton

Little Lottie’s wildlife protest forces councillors’ debate An outstanding young campaigner has underlined Greta Thunberg’s dictum: "No one is too small to make a difference"

“Wildlife campaigner (ten-year-old) Lottie rushed straight from school to Darlington Town Hall on Monday, carrying with her a precious petition to save acres of much-loved countryside from the builders”. #nature #biodiversityloss #signthepetition

northeastbylines.co.uk/news/environ...

The secret life of migrating insects Insect migrations are the most remarkable and unappreciated journeys on earth. But they also determine what you will have for dinner

“even spiders accomplish these great journeys through ‘ballooning’ – climbing to a high point and releasing silk threads from their spinnerets to get aloft” #aerobiology

#biodiversityloss #climatecrisis

sussexbylines.co.uk/news/environ...

The “February fill-dyke” as my Father used to call it, a lifelong riverman #climate #rivermanagement

Flooded fields under a leaden sky, a scene that could be the Somerset Levels

“Heavy rains that often fall in February have flooded the low-lying meadows in the broad valley.”
‘What to Look for in Winter’, 1959
Artist: CF Tunnicliffe
Writer: EL Grant Watson

A new all-electric double-decker Climate Stripes bus has started taking passengers around Reading today.

The bus shows the warming stripes for Reading back to the 1860s and will hopefully help start climate conversations amongst passengers.

#ShowYourStripes

From decline to recovery: seagrass returns to the Humber A Wilder Humber project trial demonstates the possibility for large-scale recovery of the estuary’s vital seagrass meadows

“Seagrass … punches well above its weight. It is the only flowering plant that lives entirely in seawater and is one of the planet’s most powerful natural climate allies, globally capturing carbon at rates far higher than tropical rainforests”

yorkshirebylines.co.uk/news/environ...

Sewage Watch – Protect our rivers and beaches Since April 2023 Sewage Watch has been keeping a running log of press coverage on the state of sewage dumping into our rivers and onto our beaches - Updated January 2026

“Sewage spilled into brook near Malvern for more than 400 hours.
The recent spill into Madresfield Brook, which feeds into the River Severn, began on January 15 and didn’t stop until Tuesday (February 3), according to Severn Trent’s own storm overflow map”

westenglandbylines.co.uk/features/bro...

#phenology

National security assessment: the planet fails, Whitehall opens a workstream With the planet in crisis and fast approaching a point of no return for climate and environment, Whitehall wants to assess things before acting

“One heatwave, and the system behaved exactly as designed. Markets panicked. Politicians acted surprised, because surprise is cheaper than preparation and far better for the cameras”.

#Climatecrisis #noplanetb

Bylines northwestbylines.co.uk/lifestyle/fo...

The migration myth and the political con, how the UK climate crisis gets blamed on immigrants In part two of our series on the climate crisis, we look at the climate migration myth and the political narrative that comes with it

The migration myth and the political con, how the UK climate crisis gets blamed on immigrants
#climatecrisis #climatechange #globalwarming #thenewclimatewar northwestbylines.co.uk/environment/...

More than a hobby: garden birdwatching is the new conservation frontier Three decades of citizen science show that our gardens are more than just patches of lawn – they are critical frontlines for conservation

More than a hobby: garden birdwatching is the new conservation frontier #birdwatching eastangliabylines.co.uk/environment/...

AI is evil. How much power and water was used to create that abomination? It should be called out at every opportunity.

AI

Snowdrop (Galanthus) plants flowering in winter sun

Sunday #snowdrops #phenology