John Altringham

@johnaltringham.bsky.social

272 Followers 130 Following

Scientist, conservationist (emeritus professor), mountain-lover, artist. Happiest outdoors. Climate change and biodiversity crises are real. Live in northern England. Often in Scotland. All photos and other artwork mine. https://johnaltringham.co.uk

A swift in mid-manoeuvre from below, tail and wings spread.
Three photos of grey wagtails collecting insects among water-smoothed pebbles and cobbles on the river's edge. Slender birds with long, wagging tails, grey backs, dark wings, yellow rumps.
A path lined with wild and not-so-wild flowers passes through a large, fractured and collapsed, but still growing, willow.
Swifts zooming around a street of large Victorian stone houses. The sky is blue with bright white cumulus clouds and there's a glimpse of moorland in the background.
Panorama of breaking and dispersing clouds over moorland.
Six sunlit starlings in flight in a blue sky.
A small group of swifts in an orange sunset, seen from a distance.
A river, crossed by an old stone bridge, seen through a gap in dense vegetation.
A small b&w jumping spider on a white, softly textured paper.
Watercolour in blues. Early mist and cloud are clearing from mountains seen across a sea passage. The sea is deep blue under a band of heavy cloud but for a bright, sunlit patch in the centre.
Young robin sat on a fence in the sun, head tilted to one side
Three wood engravings, printed in black ink, in black frames.
Print in grey and black inks of a wood engraving. A view across a vertical rock buttress to rocky mountains and ridges, with lowlands and sea beyond.
watercolour of dipping rock planes on a beach with numerous bedding planes and faults at right angles to each other. And a distinctive horizontal tide mark of barnacles and other lifeforms.
Old sandstone wall with a survey benchmark at its base.
Watercolour. Blue cloudy sky over blue islands and a blue sea. A break in the cloud throws a line of light on the sea.
A kingfisher perched on a tree root on a riverbank.
Out of focus swift flies across the face of the early evening moon.
half moon in evening light
House martins investigate the gable of a stone-built house as a possible nesting site. One is almost hidden, clinging to the wall behind the barge-board. Another is clinging on to the wall below it and a third flies by.
Fresh green symmetry and order in fern frond pinnules shaped like parsley leaves.
Beinn Sgritheall across the Sound of Sleat, Skye. Sunset turns the mountain a pale apricot colour and clouds scatter shadows, helping to reveal the mountain relief.
A dipper, a round, chestnut brown bird with a white bib standing in a shallow, fast flowing river, lit by a low sun.
Wood engraving print of a ruined castle on a headland under a stormy sky. Waves roll and break on a beach in the foreground, the wind rips spray backwards off the wave tops. Printed with a colour gradient from blue-black sky and headband to a mid-blue with a hint of green sea.
Monochrome watercolour of rugged, 3D islands on a 'paper' sea, seen from the air.
Photo - part of a prehistoric stone circle on moorland under a bright sun.
Frog in a pond in dappled sunlight.
Print of a wood engraving in black ink of a woodland path with tree-root ‘steps’ leading to a stile out of the wood.
Dense patch of bluebells and greater stitchwort in dappled sunlight on a woodland floor.
Curlew sitting on drystone wall, above, another curlew in flight, wings and primaries spread.
Print in black ink from a 10x10 cm wood engraving. The partially ruined wall of a mediaeval abbey. Above a doorway flanked by blind arcades three tall windows with pointed arches are lit by the sun from the right. Grass grows on the broken top of the wall and through the windows you can see a wooded valley side.
Golden Plover, a medium-sized wader, with a short bill. Black face and breast, the back is bright spotted white, black/brown and gold (dominant) from the top of the head to the tip of the tail and part of the wing.
Doorway of ruined mediaeval monastery photographed in 'warm' winter sunset light.
Rugged mountain under deep snow and a blue sky
Watercolour. The side of a colourful stone building with a history. Most of it is dressed sandstone but at the base is a more rubbly section. Some windows still in use (with satellite tv dishes) , most are bricked up, but with different materials, probably at different times, because another building was once attached to the wall. The line of the gable is still obvious due to differential weathering.
Rough sketch in walnut (brown) ink of a wet and misty moorland edge.
Wood engraving print in black ink of columnar basalt cliffs of Rubha Hunish on the northern tip of Skye. A steep rocky path descends from a break between the two buttresses and two tiny figures give the scene scale. Two engraving tools lie alongside.
Watercolour. An ascending mountain ridge of three rocky pinnacles in a winter snowstorm.
Print in black ink of six tall, slender standing stones, part of stone circle. The stones and the ground have some realism. The sky is more graphically represented by horizontal line that increases in width as they rise through cumulus clouds.
Sketch in dark brown walnut ink of a mountain showing several ridges and corries leading up to a broad, complex plateau/summit. Done in a relatively sparse, graphic style with an empty sky.
Print in black ink of wood engraving. Snow covered conical peak. Below, a loch edged by trees, reflections in the water. Above, a starry night sky with a prominent Milky Way.
Unfinished engraving on a polished and inked 10x10cm block of lemonwood. The block is cut across the grain, which in this tree species is very fine. An engraving tool and pencil are shown for scale. Tall basalt cliffs are seen from the bottom of a path that descends a break in the cliffs and across extensive scree slopes. Two tiny figures can be seen on the path.
A beach at sunset. The tide is out and shallow seawater pools reflect the late afternoon sky as they drain to the sea in sweeping curves. The beach is backed by tall sand dunes.
Rapid and very loose watercolour of an ornate entrance to a red sandstone building. The frontage is crowded with pointed neo-gothic arches, statues in the niches of carved pillars and windows with elaborate surrounds.
Loose and somewhat messy watercolour sketch in blue-black of an elaborate 19C church with a large spire.
Watercolour, 79x56cm. Scattered autumn leaves of many species on a white background. And a few seeds, berries and invertebrates.
Panoramic photo. The sun has just gone down over a flat plain of rough pasture, scattered white cottages and tumbledown drystone walls. Off the high snout of a cliff a SW wind blows waves of lenticular clouds, pink in the setting sun, rising gently from right to left. The moon hangs in the middle of the clear blue sky, above the clouds.
Photo. Dark clouds, mountains, mist, sea, sunlight, sparkle, silver linings.
100x100mm lemonwood block engraved with a stonechat perched on a young, growing and unfurling, bracken frond, with a foreground of bracken and other plants, receding through shrubs along a path to a stile in a drystone wall, with more moorland beyond. The bird looks inquisitively at me. An engraving tool and a pencil are included for scale.
Heavily faulted rock exposure with a liberal and pleasing array of lichens and mosses.
Male sparrowhawk on a fence.
B&W photo. Loch in foreground backed by cliff in shadow on the right, sunlit screes on the left and in the centre a tall, triple-buttressed cliff is raked by sunlight.
Watercolour, Hebridean island in a choppy sea.
Walnut ink (rich brown) sketch of a mountain ridge.