Day: August 17, 2021

Rambling with the Nats, 1873

naturalists
Artists impression of Victorian naturalists, drawn on Clip Studio Paint (I’m trying out the Lasso filled-shape tool). It would be wonderful if a photograph of the Nats on a ramble in Victorian times ever turned up.

Wakefield Express- 31 May 1873

WAKEFIELD NATURALISTS’ SOCIETY

On Saturday last the members of this Society had a field-day at Nostell, Ryhill, and Wintersett. It was a beautiful day, and nature decked in her spring garb of ever-varying green, displayed that wonderful freshness with which no other part of the year can vie. After several hours’ enjoyment in the woods and lanes, the party met at the Angler’s Arms, Wintersett, where, after tea, the president (Mr Alderman Wainwright, F.L.S.) took the chair and subsequently named the plants about fifty species which had been collected during the afternoon. – Mr Taylor named the conchological specimens, of which fourteen species were exhibited, and Mr Sims named the geological specimens and made some interesting remarks on the geological formations of the neighbourhood. – Messrs. Parkin and Lumb, whose attention had been chiefly directed during the day’s excursion to the observation of the spring migrants, reported they had seen fifteen species of them, and that they had also noticed a Heron and a pair of Common Gull besporting themselves upon the reservoir. Messrs. Fogg and Heald exhibited the larvae of several species of geometae. Returning by way of Hawe Park, the party arrived back at Wakefield as the evening closed in, after spending a most enjoyable and delightful day.

My thanks to Lesley Taylor for spotting this.

Southern Hawker

Southern hawker dragonfly

This southern hawker dragonfly, Aeshna cyanea, was hawking around by a sheltered path through the woodland at RHS Harlow Carr Gardens but obligingly perched on a rhododendron leaf, allowing us to photograph it. This is a male, distinguished by the three blue-spotted segments at the tip of its abdomen.

Woodland at Harlow Carr

A nuthatch calls insistently as we take the path behind the Doric Temple.

Rhododendron

These twisted trunks remind me of old olive trees, but I think that they’re Rhododendrons.

Sequoia bark

Giant Sequoia bark has a spongy texture, which acts as insulation in forest fires. Much as I like sequoias, I’m sorry to hear that large plantations of them are being planted on some Welsh hillsides: this might be an efficient way of taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere but it won’t do a lot for another key environmental problem, the loss of biodiversity.