And a drawing of the spitting spider in action from W S Bristowe's 'The World of Spiders' in the New Naturalist series (1958)

6 earthworms on a tarmac path in the rain

290+ worms spotted on the path this morning.

It's such a treat seeing the vitality of nature on a rainy and overcast morning.

Remember: Worms enable humanity!

Always check for #Binvertebrates! Bin tasks can take a long time I'm our household.

Tick booty

Stenomalina, possibly S. gracilis ... ?

#Wasps #Hymenoptera #VC55

Gotta celebrate every #Binvertebrate

Magical #FungiFriends #ScarletElfcup

Absolutely stunning cave spider in the compost bin. Meta menardi. What a beauty. #spiders

Under a rock on a beach, gravel and sea slaters

Sea slaters!

White, yellow, grey and brown lichens on a rock.

Lichen picture

The approach to Kerrysdale Bridge during the floods in February 1998. It was the worst flooding in the #Gairloch area in living memory. More than six inches fell over a 36 hour period; the equivalent of a month's average rainfall

[photo from the collections at Gairloch Museum]

Bryozoa, or sea mats, are colonial animals. Depending on the species, they can have planktonic larval stages that look like the first video (a coronate larva), or the second video (a cyphonautes larva). Both are super fun to watch!

#marineplankton 🦑

Filling the bird feeders and this wee Robin came to help. Got frost bite while trying get it to eat from my hand🥶 Listen to its subsong, (apart from the chirping Sparrows) delightful. @bto-gbw.bsky.social @edinburghnats.bsky.social @scottishbirding.bsky.social

A digital illustration of orb weaver spiders found in British Columbia. The spiders are arranged on a spider web with dew drops. Spiders are labelled and numbered 1 to 7. The spiders and are names are written as followed. 1. Araneus marmoreus 2. Araneus trifolium 3. Argiope trifasciata 4 Araneus iviei 5. Neoscona oaxacensis 6. Araniella displicata 7. Araneus nordmanni

Illustrated my favourite kind of spiders, Orb Weavers! 🕷️

These particular orb weavers in this illustration focuses on species found in British Columbia Canada 🇨🇦

#art #spiders #spiderart #science #scienceillustration #arachnids

Image of book entitled Beauty of the Beasts on a purple background with the text, ‘Rethink the repulsive: Discover the hidden beauty of nature’s most misunderstood animals’

‘Why would anybody write a book about the creatures that people don’t like? That’d never sell.

Well, reader, I did just that…’

Beauty of the Beasts comes out next month! 🥳

Find out more and pre-order here: www.bloomsbury.com/uk/beauty-of...

🦈 🐊 🐍 🕷️ 🦟 🐛 🐝 🐀 🪳

@chiffchat.bsky.social

Elder bark is distinctively rugged

Elder is underappreciated.

Little furry fungi 'ears' on a dead log.

Jelly ear on Elder

Brackety type fungus on log

Fun fungus

Super hairy ivy on tree trunk

Ivy growing on a tree trunk

I thought I heard them yesterday and today, there he was! The bullfinches are back in my Somerset garden hooray! He was tucking into the dried up blackberries. Pic taken through 2 sets of dirty windows💚
#birdoftheday #birds #nature #wildlife

At Redford Birchwood, Bavelaw Marsh #PentlandHills on 20/01/2026, Linopenthaleus irki amongst moss and lichen on dead Birch. Very fast-moving so blurred photos. IDed via Acari Recording Scheme by @acaricious.bsky.social. Sadly this genus and/or species is not recognised on #iRecord or #IBNAtlas.

Gorgeous red-brown jelly fungus on dead wood, beside a flowing (brown) river. Jelly ear is what they feel like. Sometime used in dried soup sachets.

Oh yes, feel those jelly ears!

Yellow fungus on dead log.

Witches butter from 6 Jan, with a bit of frost too.

Flat worm, flat worm, flatty flatty flat worm. Marine Turbellarian just being cool.

#marineplankton 🦑

Spider imagery appears in Andean works of art from the middle of the first millennium BCE this wondeful and delicate nose ornament comes from the Salinar culture: see metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/313364 for more information.

15th Century stained glass fragment in the in the Zouche Chapel, York Minster.

Little Miss Muffet by Arthur Rackham, from the nursery rhyme of the same name, from the 1913 book Mother Goose - The Old Nursery Rhymes. Public domain image.

Detail view of embroidery on the 2012 Godley & Peers Golden Spider Silk Cape: image thanks to Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. More info at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Spider_Silk_Cape

From the Met's Peruvian nose ornament in gold wire (200 BCE–300 CE), to the #Medieval stained glass wren with spider at York Minster, the classic 1913 Arthur Rackham illustration of Miss Muffet and the golden cape of #Nephila silk, #spiders and their artistry continue to inspire great art.

Illustration from 1767 depicting eight detailed black-and-white engravings of various beetles with prominent horns and pincers, labeled with numbers 1 to 8. Each beetle is shown from a different angle, highlighting intricate textures on their exoskeletons and segmented legs. The page header indicates the scientific source but does not relate to spiders. The beetles have robust bodies with large mandibles or horn-like structures, emphasizing anatomical features. The antique style engraving shows cross-hatching shading typical of 18th-century natural history illustrations.

🕷 Jacobi Petiveri Opera, historiam naturalem spectantia
London: Printed for John Millan, Bookseller ..., 1767.

[Source]

Physarum bivalve. Fir and Pond Wood. A myxomycete. I haven’t seen this before but was struck by its shape and pattern.

5 mushrooms in lawn.

Fungorama

Photo of dictionary text with definition "Trump , to deceive." Book is "A critical inquiry into the Scottish Language" from 1882.

A personal favourite...

Earthworm crossing a road in the rain. Wonderful.

To boldly go...