As usual, some of the star birds we’d hoped for, such as the great-spotted woodpecker and the sparrowhawk, didn’t put in an appearance as we completed this year’s hour of observation for the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch.
All but three of the eleven species that we recorded visited the bird feeders, currently stocked with peanuts, sunflower hearts and Peckish bird seed. A cock pheasant and a blackbird foraged down the garden while a dunnock hopped about at the foot of the hedge.
Around 50 wood pigeons suddenly flew up from the wood, perhaps disturbed by a sparrowhawk, but not one of them visited the garden.
On our circuit of the lagoons at RSPB St Aidan’s this morning we saw a sparrowhawk at Astley Lake and, over the ridge, kestrel, buzzard and red kite – the latter two being mobbed by a crow, which couldn’t decide which one to go for.
As we returned to the car park we got a chance to see a little owl in a bush behind the dragline excavator: a grey streaky shape against the brownish gnarled trunk of the bush. We wouldn’t have spotted it without the help of an observant bird-watcher.
The hill sheep I saw on an an archive ‘Look at Life’ film on Talking Pictures TV looked strikingly grey. The round-up was filmed in the Peak District, c.1960, so I don’t think these were some rare breed that I haven’t come across, it looked more as if they’d been downwind of the smoky chimneys of the Manchester’s textile mills and picked up a good sprinkling of soot.
The days are getting longer but by the time I get around to painting this in the late afternoon, getting on for half past four, the light is fading fast.
In the aftermath of Storm Goretti, which thankfully passed by without incident here, female pheasants sit hunched up in the morning rain.
A sparrowhawk zooms up over the hedge, turns 180 degrees without catching any of the birds on the feeders and continues on its rounds.
A wren hops about on the frozen surface of the pond and pecks at the overhanging vegetation, disappearing for a while as it explores under a clump of sedge.
The great tit’s head markings are a cross between a superhero mask and a muffler.
Four blackbirds are steadily stripping berries from a hawthorn alongside the Horticentre car park at Overton.
Facing upstream, I get the impression that the Hepworth is gently moving, the feeling you get when you’re on a train in a station and the train on the adjacent line starts gradually edging away in the opposite direction.
This is pencil and watercolour crayon, a change from my usual pen and watercolour because its dry media only if you’re working in the galleries. The Hepworth encourage people to draw and have folding stools available.
The gooseberry crumble cake with a latte in the downstairs cafe is another attraction on a barely-above-freezing morning.
With the prospect of days getting longer, I feel the urge to start making a few natural history notes again.
Recent highlights have included sparrowhawks on their rounds again. So far we haven’t spotted one making a kill on one of its swooping surprise visit to our bird feeders.
It’s usually a smaller, greyish brown male visiting, which pauses for a few minutes break in the hedge or crab apple, then continues towards the woodland edge where its progress is marked by groups of wood pigeons flying up and away from the treetops.
One afternoon as I unloaded the car at the front of the house, a sparrowhawk sped past just one foot above the pavement, climbing swiftly to clear a tall larch fence and heading between the houses to the back gardens beyond.
Christmas Day
An immaculate-looking cock pheasant is pecking around near the bird feeders alongside three females. They’re not alone. There are another three females down by the pond, four checking out the hedge by the shed and more of them foraging over the veg beds, some of them pecking at all that’s left of our cavolo nero. It’s probably the calm before the storm for these pheasants as Boxing Day is a traditional day for a shoot.
Christmas Day sketches: holly, bay, Viola tricolor and a poorly chaffinch.
My father used to meet up with his shooting friends at Terrington, in the Howardian Hills, North Yorkshire, not far from Castle Howard. He’d bring back a few pheasants – two would be a brace of pheasants – which would hang from the shelves in our storeroom, smelling increasingly gamey until my mum plucked them.
Boxing Day Shoot, c.1962, Fred Green’s cottage. Fred Green, who I think is the figure in the centre, was the gamekeeper. The man in the beret, front row, right, is Eric Chalkley, who lived on Stanley Road, Wakefield and who, I believe, worked for the National Coal Board.
Boxing Day Walk
We join a motley procession. Two pied ponies with young riders are walking on, guided by an older couple, the man kitted out in yellow high viz jacket. Following ten paces behind them are four hikers in animated conversation then, another ten paces behind, a man with a dog.
We emerge from a footpath to tag along at the end. There’s no way that we can stride out to overtake them on this narrow country lane, so we adopt the measured clip, clop pace of the party, a relaxed pace that I could imagine a party of medieval pilgrims adopting.
Shepherd, Wakefield Mystery Plays
Chaucer’s pilgrims upped their pace when they saw the towers of Canterbury Cathedral up ahead We still call this pace between walking on and a gallop a canter.
Periwinkle growing in the hawthorn hedge.
It was spring-like enough on Boxing Day for a song thrush to be singing its varied thrice-repeated snatches of song. A robin sang its wistful trickle of a song in the hedgerow.
No spring flowers as such yet but a few periwinkle flowers are already showing on straggling stems in the hedge near some old cottages on Coxley Lane.
8.45 am: We hear a flock of grey geese – probably pink-footed – approaching. They’re flying low, heading slightly north of east, towards the Calder Valley. I guess there are about 200 in a couple of ragged ‘Vs’.
We had a sprinkling of snow overnight which remains powdery all day. I sweep it from the drive rather than scoop it away.
