Short walk on the Kilpatrick Braes this afternoon. Warmest day of the year so far. Quite a few butterflies, peacocks and Orange Tips around. Lots of wee flowers. The usual suspects singing in the trees, a grouse & stonechat on the moor. Larks singing. #bloomscrolling #bloomstrolling
Took the short walk to Greenside reservoir this morning. Lots of spring happening, bird song, especially chiffchaff & willow warbler. Heard blackcaps (confirmed with merlin) and finally saw some. A cuckoo calling, the first this year. A few butterflies around including one small tortoiseshell.
Walk in the rain round the short Kilpatrick loop this morning. Lots of birds singing mostly out of sight. Tree pipets in good voice, & displaying in the trees at the edge of the moor. Blackthorn fully out, trees starting to bud. Flowers hanging their heads in the drizzle.
A haze of blackthorn in the Drizzle.
#SilentSunday
Kilpatrick Braes, the blackthorn here still in bud, later than others places I’ve been recently. Warm & sunny with a bit of a breeze. Few bumble bees out exploring the ground. Several butterflies, probably peacocks, rushed by. Lots of birds singing. Heard a green woodpecker a few times. Chiffchaffs mostly heard but saw a couple. More primroses opening, some mouse-ear cress. Larch starting to green & buds on a chestnut at the edge of the heather.
#SilentSunday
Walked round to the coop, sun is shining, bees out. An hour later, sleet, hailstones & snow!
REVEIL 2026. I’ve just set up my page for this year’s Reveil broadcast.
The Reveil broadcast will again make a full loop of the earth over the Dawn Chorus Day weekend in May 2026.
reveil
We welcome new and established streamers to join in assembling a sequence of live sounds starting near the 0 meridian at daybreak on Saturday and returning 24 hours later, with a 1 hour coda.
I’ll be trying to broadcast from Victoria Park from 4:45 on Sunday 3 May. Hopefully no helicopters this year.
![Newspaper clipping reads:
The alarming bit was how out of touch the Al world was. "People would talk about how Al is going to bring all this wealth that will rain down - all we
have to do is figure out how to distribute it. But the Industrial Revolution already [promised] this, and we did not distribute the wealth globally. Why would this be any different? That attitude] was pervasive and hard to watch. If you take your eyes off your two smartphones and look around, San Francisco is a city that has enormous poverty."](https://johnjohnston.info/blog/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/ai-wealth-distribution-torn_paper-1024x460.png)
Zoë Hitzig the whistleblower tells all Observer 29-03-2026 seems to be hind a pay wall? I read in the paper. A poets view of AI risks.
