Yesterday’s snow lingering on at the lower end of Coxley Valley.
Lingering Snow
Author: Richard
School Exercises
Another of my finds from old Wakefield Market. The original isn’t in colour but I thought that the ‘Ripping Yarns’ scenes from Edwardian school life deserved a spot of colourisation in Photoshop.
Knapweed Seedheads
Seedheads of common knapweed, Centaurea nigra, from my patch of wildflower meadow at the end of the garden.
The Noonday Fly
A couple of these striking-looking flies – black with sunburst spots on the wing bases – were basking around the ivy flowers in the south-facing shelter of the walled garden at RSPB Saltholme.
The female Noon Fly, or Noonday Fly, Mesembrina meridiana, lays a single egg on horse or cow dung. The larva is a predator, feeding on other fly larvae in the dung.
A Record of Wakefield’s Market
Sydney Granville as Bill Bobstay, the Boatswain, cover star of this complete performance on 78 rpm records (or it would be complete if one of the 12-inch shellac resin records hadn’t got chipped), makes a guest appearance at my Wakefield Market show at the Gissing Centre, Thompson’s Yard, Westgate, at the next Wakefield Art Walk, on the evening Wednesday, 27 November.
I came across the records at the market on the stalls over towards Vicarage Street, which sold the kind of secondhand bric-a-brac that these days you’d look for at a car boot sale.
Common Darter
Still around at the beginning of November, two male common darter dragonflies, Sympetrum striolatum, were resting on a fence by the play area at RSPB Saltholme.
The Whin Sill
This promontory of the Whin Sill in the bay below Dunstanburgh Castle looks like a twisted stretch of road jutting out to sea. As the name suggests gorse – also known as whin – grows on the outcrop and there was still plenty of it in flower today.
Our coffee break was at Eleanor’s Byre. Eleanor was the sister of Henry III and lived here, a mile or two from Dunstanburgh. In her will she set up a lepers’ hospital a few traces of which – cobbles used to surface a yard and a gate pillar – were found when the buildings were renovated.
The golden retrievers, a pair of them, were taking a lunch break in the Jolly Sailor at Caster.
Hauxley Nature Reserve
The Lookout Cafe at the Northumberland Wildlife Trust Hauxley Nature Reserve is an ideal place to sketch.
At the opposite corner of the reserve, on the lagoon near the outlet to Druridge Bay, a female gadwall is dabbling amongst a raft of washed-up kelp.
The spindle has fuchsia-red fruits which remind me of miniature pumpkins. It looks as if most of the orange berries of sea buckthorn have already been eaten, perhaps by redwings and fieldfares, but there are a few clumps left close to the path. We had a glimpse of what I thought was a flock of redwings going over, if so, these are the first that we’ve seen this year.
Woodhorn
The view of the Queen Elizabeth II Country Park, from our first-floor room in the Premier Inn, Woodhorn, near Ashington, Northumberland.
Inspired by a book that I’m reading on drawing ‘Five-minute Landscapes’, I’m trying to speed things up in my sketchbook – although I’m unlikely to manage the five-minute ideal.
I’m also still rehabilitating my right thumb, which is still hurting after eight months. This Uniball Eye pen, a fibre tip with waterproof in, seems to be a gentler, more free-flowing option than my regular fountain pen.
Shovellers at Saltholme
Redshank, black-tailed godwit and a flock of several hundred golden plovers at RSPB Saltholme.
We took a break at the reserve on our return journey from Northumberland too, when we also saw dunlin and marsh harrier.
