A plateau on Bird Island, South Georgia, being used by displaying non breeding wandering albatrosses. This is December in the Antarctic. These birds will all be about 6-8 years old, and still haven’t bred for the first time. Once paired, they remain so for their lives. The artist carries a bird to be ringed and weighed. The north west tip of South Georgia in the background. Painted in 2026, from source material collected in 1981-1983.

The freedom and tingle enjoyed by running away from a crashing wave, with a strong off shore wind, bringing the gannets close to the shore to feed. This is Antrim, in the north of Ireland.

As a young field biologist working in the Antarctic, I was mesmerised by the sound, smell and sheer spectacle of this macaroni penguin breeding colony. This is near my “Colony B” grey-headed albatross study site, out of view on the left. In the distance, the Willis Island group. In the 1980’s , where this observation was made, we thought there were 250,000 breeding macs here, maybe 5,000,000 on the Willis Islands. Today many of these slopes look quite bare. Penguin decline has been severe.

My first breaching humpback whale off the west coast of Scotland in 2024, which I just managed to capture on camera, and turned into a birthday card for my grandson.

We walked the St Francis Way, a pilgrimage from Florence to Rome, passing through Assisi at about the half way mark. On the journey, you walk through many Tuscan and Umbrian villages, which are remote and often sitting atop very steep hills. Each village has a church, ancient, dark and blissfully cool. Light streams through in a most religious and comforting way. 2023

The mauve jelly, a common jelly fish off British waters, but you have to be prepared to dive off shore in the mid water to see them alive and manoeuvering in the current. I saw this species diving off Scotland. Such an ancient group of animals, they would have looked just the same in Jurasic seas. From observations made in the 1980’s.

2025 Christmas card, based on travels to Tromso, Norway.

A great northern diver, looked over by my Wayfarer. These are observations made on the island of Ronay off the east coast of North Uist.

North Cambridgeshire can catch you by surprise. Great swathes of it are drained fen, first drained over 300 years ago, and today makes up some of Englands grade best farmland for food crops. Around the ditches and dykes of the fields, there are more open areas of natural flooding, with bull rush and reed. A window on the wild, and a post card from the past . Before drainage this was probably one of the greatest wetlands in England.

Flip the dog on Sanday, Orkney. Our dear Jack Russell is still with us, here she is 7 years old. Born in West Wales on a farm, raised and lived with us in the inner city of Bristol, and has enjoyed the best best best life seeing many parts of the nations of the UK. Can you spot the goose barnacles!

When you to sail at night close to the south west shore of Ireland, you a see a beam of light arcing over your head heading miles into the distance. This is the light of Fastnet lightouse. The light is trained to be seen 10 miles off shore, to warn shipping away from the shoreline. It’s a little bit gothic, hugely powerful and one of the great wonders of human maritime engineering.

“Bryntirion”, chapel on the hill, gorgeous Pembrokeshire where I am allowed so much access to undisturbed moments.

Curlew on a Norfolk marsh, England.

Sulawesi, 2000. My first visit to a coral reef, and here I am in Indonesia, utterly mesmerised by light, colour and movement.

Northumberland, England. A manmade drinking pool, for cattle, probably 200 plus years old. Rich and gorgeous, exposed and natural.

Stand by Me, Oasis, Wembly London. I was there with my 19 year old granddaughter in 2025 and blown away by the 90’s revisit Britpop super group. Multi-generational mega singalong. Utterly moving.

Swifts heading south over Wells in Somerset, England. I was in a friends microlight, and we were flying around the Wells radio mast, when we were joined by these magnificent aviators. I left my 3 young teenage girls on the ground (they’d all been up one by one), and saw them racing around the field in our Citroen BX Estate!

Cosmic BOOM!

Golden plovers murmurating over the Severn Estuary, Somerset, England.

A male grey seal in the Outer Hebridies

Coming in to land. Wandering albatross parents returning after eight days at sea filling their crop with food to regurgitate to their chick.

a Fiat Panda 4×4 greets us walking the Camino St Francis, Umbria, Italy.

Dawn chorus, “Bryntirion” Pembrokeshire, Wales.

I remember dropping down onto a very secluded cove on Bird Island South Georgia. I doubt another person had ever been there, it was very hidden and so hard to drop in to it was irresponsible. I was on my own, and there a sleeping elephant seal and a sprinkling of gentoo penguins. Total privilege.

Some of my familiy live in Pembrokeshire, one of the most beautiful counties in Wales. Here the Atlantic continuously carves out the coastline, and many rivers empty into the sea, giving rise to Wales’s famous sandy estauries. Here the tide is in, with a strong on-shore wind, up the Teifi river.

Heading to Lanzarote over night whilst on a passage navigation course on a 40 foot Beneteau.

The city

Ronay, North Uist, and the locals that came to visit,

Northumberland, England. Not far from Hadrian’s Wall. Uplands in England are a unique place of international importance. There’s a wonderful ancientness of human settlement here.

Whooper swans heading south, to the British or Irish Isles, from ther breeding grounds in Iceland. I saw this wonderful spectacle of swan migration whilst on a Norwegian research vessel heading to Tromso from Greenland.

A tawny owl asleep in dog wood, outside a family home in Pembrokeshire. I was sleeping in what was to become my grandson’s bedroom, on the first night my family moved in. The house was pretty raw, and the outside and inside were almost one in this room on that day. I woke at 5am to see this owl. I never saw her again so close.

Ctenophores, or comb jellies, ancient creatures with cilia that beat back and forth creating the colours of the rainbow as they move in the current. Seen off the coast of Pembrokeshire.

Eider ducks into wind off the coast of Sylt, Germany.

Me and my Wayfarer, with a lot of mods on it, not making it resemble that class any more! All to help me sail on my own.