#SilentSunday

#SilentSunday



Park Pond, two young dabchicks with one or two parents. Never saw the parents at the same time. Fishing & feeding the wee ones. About 10 metres along another adult & young one. Was surprised as I’ve not seen many about over the summer. Nesting in the space between Islands out of sight I guess?

Lots of the ivy was alive with hoverflies wasps & bees on Tuesday. Lots of buzzing!

Blustery afternoon on path to Greenside, mostly blue sky. Despite the wind a some butterflies: peacocks, painted lady, red admiral & a few speckled woods. Goldfinch in the meadowsweet. A raven circled high in the blue. The news reported less speckled woods this year, but I’ve seem more than ever.

#silentsunday
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.


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.




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 photos of a raven, imagemagick B&W & montage. #corvid #raven

#SilentSunday


Victoria Park, drizzle them brightened, a couple of white butterflies over the flower beds. Went to investigate. Among the bright flowers were a few thistles. A couple of bees working over the thistles ignoring the other flowers. One butterfly came off a thistle too. Not sure which type of white.

#SilentSunday

Out to Greenside this morning, warm, close and sometimes sunny. Butterflies: Green-veined Whites, several spotted woods, peacocks, small tortoiseshells & painted ladies on thistles.
I rather like this odd view of a painted lady. few more photos on flickr. My Butterflies by month continues to grow.
#bloomstrolling for #bloomscrolling in Glen Douglas yesterday. Lots of sparkles on the ground. #flora.

Insects, from a walk round Ardmore point yesterday.






A lot of white butterflies (mostly green-veined, large & small) out & about on Friday. Some flightily red admirals too.
Later, beside the track an excited green-veined white butterfly fluttering amount the leaves. Underneath a leaf a small white hanging upside down. Misplaced affection?
Talking a short walk along the Kelvin between Kelvin Bridge & The Botanics while my wife was in the dentist. These sunlit leaves above the path pulled in this speckled wood. Another flew over some sparkling water through light & shade. A happy moment.


Given the good weather there are quite a lot of butterflies around this week. This one looks like an old one that has been in the wars, black faded and very ragged. I wonder what tales it could tell. My butterfly by month page is building nicely.

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.


#Flora #BloomStrolling #BloomScrolling

#SilentSunday #Bird
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

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.

#SilentSunday #Butterfly





Walk around Victoria park this afternoon. Warm and quite sunny. Lots of small damselflies out on the pond.

#SilentSunday #flora #bees

TIL copy all tabs in iOS safari. On mac, I have a nice wee AppleScript that copies to the clipboard links to all my open tabs in Safari’s top window. I’ve always been a bit frustrated that I couldn’t do the same on iOS. But I can. Tab view then the ellipsis at the top right, copy n tabs.

#SilentSunday
I made a tiny pixel character creator called Pixabots. It generates 10,752 unique combinations from four categories — eyes, heads, bodies, and tops — all bouncing on a little idle loop.
This pack is a curated 2,000 of them, ready to use. Free.



Not sure where I saw this, there is a live editor at Pixabots — Pixel Character Avatars which is fun. Could be useful in class I think. Perhaps in Scratch when an uploaded gif is turned into a sprite with a costume for each frame.

Walk round Ardinning this afternoon. Cuckoos calling. Willow warblers & ravens heard. Corn bunting & stonechats seen & heard. Warm & breezy plenty of butterflies, mostly Orange Tips & Green-Veined whites, a Painted Lady. A few small red damselflies didn’t stay still although one landed on D’s hat.