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Over the last few years, my blogging has slowly became less social. I thought I might reboot that by responding to Knowember, get to know your blogger – Robert Birming. I’ve been enjoying visiting the sites of other blogs listed on Robert’s page. It is good to move outside your ‘local’ area and get some serendipity. Some great rabbit holes.

A photo

Autumn colours, cloudy hills and a valley reflected in the still water of Finlas Water reservoir.
Finlas Water Reflection

I take a lot of photos, but am no photographer. I think of them as notes of nice looking or interesting things, ways of telling a story, a memory. Recently I’ve been posting sightings of flora & fauna to iNaturalist where a not very good photo can still be useful. I also enjoy the #SilentSunday hashtag on Mastodon. I mostly post via this site: Silent Sunday.

Name or nickname

My name is John Johnston, mostly online as johnjohnston. Occasionally, when that is taken, I use troutcolor, but no one has ever called me that. I started on Flickr. I like trout; I used to love fishing. I usually spell colour colour.

Where in the world I blog from

I’ve lived in Glasgow for almost 50 years, apart from occasional posts from wee holidays or alway days, I post from home. One of the best things about Glasgow is how quickly you can get to some sort of quiet countryside.

The blog is WordPress and I like to type in TextMate & drafts.

What my blog is mostly about

It started off about my use of, what was then called, Web 2 technology in the primary school classroom. It developed to include some technologies I am interested in; walks, mostly short; photos, mostly butterflies in the summer; links I like and books I’ve read. Now I am mostly retired the classroom has dropped off. I still read some education sites. The bigger tags in my cloud are classroom, blogging & WordPress. I don’t write about family, feelings or politics very much at all.

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Just has an email telling me telex has been retired. Telex was built onto of WordPress playground and allowed you to crate with A.I. plugins and themes. I experimented and made a few. Kept a bit of a record of the prompts I used and the problems I came across on a blog: Telex Testing.

It felt a bit like some of the work I did on Glow Blogs in the early days, back and forward with a developer. I didn’t make anything earth shattering but enjoyed it somewhat.

Was interesting because you didn’t need any setup, all in the browser, including testing & preview. Price was good too: free.

Screenshot of Website Testing Telex. WordPress Query Loop grid, posts illustrated with bitmap image.

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3x3 grid of images, photos round a map where they were taken. From Top Left: Road to Finlas water, singlet rack, grass on each side; Dor Better on Bracken, shiney black bettle; Buff tailed bumble bee on Devils Bit Scabious; Fence post with a loop of fence wire, grey background due to low clouds/mist; Map trac round Finlas water in red. A small tree in a misty landscape; An eagle, wings outstretched in silhouette; Grass-of-Parnassus flow; small whilre mushroom with slender stalk and veil. growing in moss

Finlas Water Hills started bright, low (400m or so) clouds. Quite a few birds, ravens, crows, hoodies, buzzards, a kestrel, pipits. Between Creaghan & Ruisg put up a snipe. By then clouds thick, visibility 30-100 metres. Flora turning, lots of scabious, some grass of Parnassus. Finally an eagle. Turned round at Creag an Leinibh as I didn’t fancy the walk down to the Finlas Water from the South in the mirk.

Map and more photos: 14-09-2026 Finlas Water Hills.

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Speckled Wood Butterfly Perched on a bramble, sunbathing
Rather battered Small Tortoiseshell Butterfly, sunning.
Painted Lady on seeded Rose-bay Wilow Herb
Common Darter on Bramble leaves. Green Yellow body, 2 big brown eyes.

Greenside morning, brighter than expected. Sunshine brought out the butterflies. Mostly Painted Ladies with a lot of Speckled Woods. One very battered Small Tortoiseshell.

Near the reservoir a flock of about 50 or so mixed goldfinch & linnets, seemed to be feeding among the seeded rose-bay willow herb and meadowsweet. Most headed for the power lines when we passed. Quite a few common darters.

3 powerlines with small bird perched on them.

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3x3 grid of 8 images round a central map of where they were taken. From Top left: Painted Lady; peacock butterfly caterpillars; small skipper; Small tortoiseshell; map;2 Meadow Browns mating; small blue; ringlet; red admiral

Short walk to Greenside reservoir this morning. Warm, mostly sunny. Lots of butterflies around.

I’d guess I saw over 200 ringlets; a lot of painted ladies & meadow browns. A few common blues & red admirals ,one small tortoiseshell & a white of some sort. A few fritillaries bright orange and zooming around, never posing. I saw one I’d never seen before. It look to me, after consulting my book & the web, like a small skipper. According to the same research this doesn’t seem to be where they are expected? Unfortunately my camera threw an error while I was trying to get a different angle.

Butterfly, looks like a small skipper, on a gras head.
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Today’s daily create #tdc5280 #ds106 #dailycreate #ShowYourStripes point toward the #ShowYourStripes webpage that very neatly shows

visual representations of the change in temperature as measured in each country, region or city over the past 100+ years

The site also links to #BiodiversityStripes

The ‘biodiversity stripes’ provide a visual representation of the change in biodiversity over time, often since 1970. The highest level of biodiversity is coloured bright green. Lower levels move through yellow to grey, depending upon the level of decline. Darker greys appear with greater declines.

This one shows the decline of UK moths from 1970 to 2018

An image showing the decline, 86%, in British moths from 1970 to 2018 The highest level of biodiversity is coloured bright green. Lower levels move through yellow to grey, depending upon the level of decline. Darker greys appear with greater declines.

86% decline in only part of my lifetime. Horrific. I was 12 in 1970, I remember when cleaning insects from a windshield was a thing.

In 2025, the now-annual survey conducted by Buglife in Kent found a decline of 66% in flying insects since 2021.

Kent bug splat survey shows ‘troubling’ fall in flying insects – BBC News

I am currently reading Aurochs and Auks by John Burnside, a wonderful book, which in part deals with the feelings around this terrible state of affairs.