Jen Ratcliffe

It's that time again 💚🌲

Join us this equinox month in a challenge to celebrate Ostara! 🥚🌈🌸

🐇 1st - 31st March
🐤 1 Post each day
🐑 About a moment in nature
🦌Tag it #DailyNature

I'll select a few each week to go up on the Substack recap

Will you be joining in?

#NatureWriting #Challenge #QuietSky

Muscovy duck. The proportions got away from me on this one. The beak drifted down. I thought I was done but it bothered me to much so I did my best to correct it.

Here ya go @jazzrat2000.bsky.social
#birds #ducks #oilpastel #sketch

A yellow-blossoming (Forsythia?) bush/tree bursting its way through a fir hedge between two gardens.

Our house came with a dull fir hedge. We let “weeds” grow through it and one of them is now a lovely yellow-flowered tree! Another one will have beautiful lilac blossoms later in the year. Let nature take its course a bit. #DailyNature

Just heard my first Chiffchaff of the year in the garden. Spring has sprung! (the mist made it look more like November/early February yesterday)

Why do these branches sound like music to my eyes?

#canvasback #duck #flight
#DetroitRiver #MI

#birds
#photography
#birdphotography
#BirdWatching
#birdsofbluesky
#nature
#wildlife
#wildlifephotography

Memory Lane: Wilson's Phalarope, September 22nd 2021 With my camera out of action and my chances of getting out birding in the immediate future slim to none, a couple of people have suggested t...

Thanks to everyone who's been in touch over the camera and blog. I took your advice and dug out an old photo, and the memory sparked an idea. This is the first in a mini-series of Memory Lane blogs, starting with Wilson's Phalarope from September 2021. Thank you for reading! #UKbirding #birds

For those looking for a heartwarming podcast 🛶

Ah I can't wait to listen. Will save for my journey home back to the towpath 💚

#UKCanals #QuietSky

My guess is that there are 3-4 kinds of lichen on this part of the tree bark. The largest is a light mint green leaf-like lichen, and some orange lichen sit between those leaves like flowery dots. On the left are some much smaller light green lichen and some of the black could be lichen, too.

#DailyNature & #photography

Entanglements
March 2026
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Most lichen are the result of multiple entanglements between fungi, algae & bacteria. To see these entangled worlds entangled emphasises a core task of rewilding: to give room to entanglements & diversity.
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#lichen #fungifriends #rewilding

Lichen are so interesting! Showing us how to really be symbiotic with other life

A molehill on the towpath!

#DailyNature Mr Mole has been busy adding points of interest to the canal towpath. It’s amazing how much is going on that we only notice because of little signs and tracks and clues.

Rose-ringed parakeet between the cherry blossom 🌸🦜

Loneliness sweeps in a cold spring afternoon, then a glow - hazy and sweet. Perfumed with laughter, curiosity - a park. I hear it's swueek before its feathers, pecking blossom for tea.

#ALTTXTIsPoetry #DailyNature #NatureWriting #birder

It's crazy how it can mean different things to different people. Yes there's that ghostly seem on the water with an in-between world. I imagine up on the fens it becomes quite the annoyance having been up there in the mist recently (but of course as a short break it's something new and interesting)

Hazel catkins nearly wrapped around a hazel bud.

#DailyNature & #photography
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Hazel wrap
March 2026
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#spring #hazel

Since being a boater my appreciation of mist has intensified (I've always loved it so bias to begin with) 💚

Pale yellow, beige and taupe bark patchy upclose

From the trunk of a London pine, the branches web out like a figure of many arms then disperse like electric fibers off circular fingertips

Rows of London Plane, platanus hybrids, neatly segment a concrete path at Southbank

#DailyNature

There seems nothing plain
about London Plane
Tall and muscular
Silver, gold and bronze
dividing, grinding, defying
concrete hives
and small terrorising passers-by
their hands burst into electric fibre
bald from winter - brutalist beauties.

Honestly between mud and bogs I'm surprised I haven't lost a leg yet 😂

Are You Wild or Feral? - Your March #DailyNature Week 1 Roundup Pigeons, Horses, Boat DIY, Ostara, Cheshire forests and standout entries form the community challenge.

Morning all 🌅

The first of Ostara #DailyNature Roundup posts is up on Substack - grab a coffee and have a listen ☕ 👂

Are you wild or are you feral?

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

#NatureWriting #QuietSky #WildHorses #Commmunity #Substack

Two wading birds silhouetted by the light and reflected in the water's surface.

The theme for today's #BirdOfTheDay is #StandingInWater.

Gone for a bit of an arty one today. Two waders which I think are probably redshanks; bills a bit short for godwits.

#birds #photography

Sound on to hear the bird-life soundtrack to my mid-morning walk, including the noisy lapwings! #DailyNature

Daisies in the dark, like cut white paper snowflakes, laying on grass as though waiting for summer lights to be turned on. Frog like fingers eith sucker pads stretch high above groves in what my mind can only imagine are leafless Joshua trees - but certainly cannot be... in London?

#DailyNature

One for the blurry birders - I've signed up!
www.bto.org/our-work/eve...

@joannahastings.bsky.social

#blurrybirding

Ooh thank you - currently on a train I have seen so many eagles and red kites 🪶💚

A small white feather on a twig, a red bud emerging.

#DailyNature & #photography

Going & Coming
March 2026
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For a moment
the leaving
and the emerging
share a spot in the sunlight.
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#spring #nature

March stars in north Hampshire, England .. Lesser Celandine

Gentle waves reach the beach, and the sunlight creates pattern in the running water separated from the sea by a sandbank.

#DailyNature & #photography
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RETURN
March 2026
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Frozen for weeks
the sea has playful note, today,
as if it too is fully awake again
and welcomes its very own spring.
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#sea #ocean #nature #spring #ClassicMono

I love that the tail is perpendicular to the tuft of tree on the right - beak also in line like a true dancer mid-turn

They certainly just are

#DailyNature

Bare blue arms
unexpected winds,
'Funny - I could have swore...
the snowdrops bloomed?'
Green clasps hide white slips
and dew-illusion shoes.
Fingers thrum
goose-pimpled collar,
then smooth with palm
human iron.
False-spring exhales,
coy,
amused, lavishing attention.
'I'll wait'

#HappyWorldBookDay

When was the last time you read a book upon our world?

This is a clip from the fantastic first episode of Water Book Club with author @amyjanebeer.bsky.social 💙🌊

Available to watch in full on Substack 🔗 ( & YouTube - MessInABoat)

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

#bookblog