There are patches and small drifts of wood sorrel alongside the path through the plantation alongside the reservoir at Langsett. On a tree-stump there are discarded scales and the nibbled core of a pine cone, left there by a squirrel.
We hear our first willow warbler singing as well as a resident wren.
A mallard duck is accompanied by ten ducklings and followed by a second adult female. She gathers her dispersed brood from our shore of the reservoir, where they’re foraging for insects or plant material on the surface of the water and they follow her in single file towards the far shore.
Red grouse are calling on the moor and perching, as they do on rocks and broken walls.
There’s a sandpiper feeding at the water’s edge where the little river enters the reservoir on the southern shore and there more sandpipers on the stone embankment at the dam head.
The Mist in the Mirror
Only a brief chance to draw the ornate balcony of Matcham’s Opera House in Wakefield before the curtain goes up on Susan Hill’s ghost story The Mist in the Mirror.
You might think that the teapot on the mantlepiece is part of the set but I drew this when we went back for coffee at Richard and Carole’s after the show.
Once again these are drawn with my new Lamy Safari pen.