early dusk, doubled by glass

& you settle down to watch woodpigeons work bright, damp barley their wings clapping as they hoist & dive slowly spot to spot; there is a young buzzard keening unseen & a solitary swift, wings stiff, bearing over straight & at speed

& by 20.00 the light has tipped & sun washes through thistledown & spills through climax vegetation 1/2

& a tiny lammas fire (we involved every precaution) & then the moon

& Lammas - midpoint between solstice & equinox - time the year's wave breaks, strafed leaves of the loch's alder sticky & brittle, reddening rowanberry & 1/2

turn the wheel to leave the coast - its gannetsplashed distance & kittiwakes sailing in blue, masted ships over horizon & viper's bugloss by the bins, the specific curviture of each particular bay

venus shines over dunes, sandmartins crossing its grain, an estuary of ebb dotted with smalll fires (2 greylag follow it inland), moon night after full stacks itself over flowlines, a cruiseliner heads out, discolights midship

yesterday by boat to a citadel of northern gannets (smooth, rainsoaked passage), much infighting & posturing, gughas (the wooly, shitstained young), 1/2 #birds

@leopardsbane.bsky.social - 2 nights from full, no dice tonight

night of the fullmoon but lead cloud stacked hides rise - 2 nights from full they rose gently & pink, shine bending over waves in the sand

dusk & braids of water still filtering down to low tide, turbine lights cherry on, way back a toad navigating moonless dunes

the night a tide, light wavering

Coastal, light variable & the sky jacks itself up & lowers down again over & over. Cruciform gannets dive before offshore turbines, a seal makes progress north. Common gull with sour expression sinks the post of their supporting leg deep into soft sand, at anchor.

Coastal, light variable & the sky jacks itself up & lowers down again over & over. Cruciform gannets dive before offshore turbines, a seal makes progress north. Common gull with sour expression sinks the post of their supporting leg deep into soft sand, at anchor.

& rainbow banners, absence of birdsong & loud below the lochan's oak as showers strike leathery canopy - young little grebe calls to no answer, a family of warblers (willow, you think) - 5 of them - flit in & out of the deerfence

& rain on the red field, gulls gliding low to inspect silver furrows

& cool air washes over until you wake & hear the unfamiliar shush of rain the whole room smelling of earth six weeks of dry softly displaced in the short, weak dark of july

& after the afterglow moon still bright with sunlight

& these strong, latesummer winds that thistle has been creeping towards (orbs spin off endlessly), while birch begins divestment (a dunnock polices your progress), 1/2

& sun bores through tangle towards set (time of 1st raspberries), the burn gone dry & clouds performing some kind of spell that belittles the moon

& dust you can taste informs breathing, a fine reddish coating on laneside leaves & your boots leave deep, martian prints. horizon at dusk seems stained with dry earth. hirundine are rampant amidst this, seeking out the loch to hunt & drink, present in every frame that points towards water or sky

& a new eathwork has thrown up an old midden - workers have placed a resurfaced green bottle. clouds smolder, & a little grebe is covert, furtive as the roe deer beginning a short night of forage. hirundine gather & break before roost. the moon moves quietly west.

the long dry. barley's shush undercut with crackle. a bleached daymoon wavers.

@leopardsbane.bsky.social - faint moon between standing stones, 21.09

out west & northern gannets, turquoise sea, belfast boats passing ailsa craig & a hovering kestrel, a Very Good Nest

two views of the new moon - 16% - afterglow, descending afloat & drifting

reflections painterly. a heron spotlit, paused on 1 leg. high point of grasses & heatwave but crowsfoot & foam remind you of icegather you have seen here deepest of winters

& a slant & eerie gloam breathe in heat & dust distance filtered through haze swallows chitter & zeep at home in a world of sticky tangle grasshopper warbler casts & reels an insect's song invisible deep in plantation & close at hand

up by swallowswooped barley, shallow sea high as the hill. cliffs' deep roots & harebells fringing their crown. 1/2

yeh buddy that's not ideal, let's get you back to green