Author: Richard

March Hare

Lakeside path, pencil and watercolour, from a photograph taken at lunchtime.

10.15 a.m.: It’s almost a year since we walked the circuit of Langsett Reservoir. We always go anticlockwise as the lakeside path through the pines gets us off to a brisk start; we prefer to leave picking our way through the mud at the far corner of the lake until later.

A coal tit flits about, investigating the branches of a lakeside pine.

As we climb the rocky path up to the moor, a robin perches in a shrub on the heathy slope.

On the moor, red grouse are calling: a repeated phrase, with the rhythm of several unsuccessful attempts to start a one-cylinder petrol mower.

A curlew repeats its bubbling call over an expanse of heather. Down by the lake we hear a shrill piping, which we guess is a sandpiper.

On our way out here, near Cawthorne, we briefly spotted a brown hare running alongside a fence. On the moor, a dead hare, lying by the track, looks like a grisly image from a Ted Hughes poem.

2 p.m.: Close to the bank by The Island at Horbury Bridge, a dabchick is diving.

Bright as a Seedsman’s Packet

After a long, dull winter, Sainsbury’s know how to get you as you stroll into the supermarket: I couldn’t resist these bright packs of bee and butterfly meadow mixes. All I’ve got to do now is clear several square metres of ground, plant the bulbs and sow the seed mixes, and wait for the flowers to attract the local pollinators.

There are plants that I would never have selected for our garden, such as gladioli, dahlia and delphinium, so it will be fun to see what works. As the labels suggest, they’ll all be attractive to bees, butterflies, hoverflies and other insects.

Sycamore Seeds

Apart from the squirrel-nibbled cone, which is from Nostell, I picked up these seeds and the lichen and the snail shell on a mossy tree-fringed lawn in Ossett.

Some of the sycamore seeds had begun to sprout while all that was left of the lime seed was the pair of wings that propelled it through the air.

The lichen, Xanthoria parietina, would normally be yellow but it turns greenish when it grows in shade. The insides of the spore-producing cups – the apothecia – have kept their colour.

Spring Garden

We’re pleased with the  way the flower bed by the rowan in the front garden has come on since we planted it out in spring last year.

The spiky ornamental grasses, the shrubby purple hebe and the tete-a-tete daffodils have all bulked up but the stars of the show are the primulas. They’ve been no more than a bedraggled rosette of leaves all winter but over the past couple of weeks we’ve seen more and more flowers appearing.

Charlotte’s

Calder valley.
Looking northwest over Mirfield in the Calder Valley.

12 noon: When we arrive at Charlotte’s Ice Cream Parlour, Whitley Lower, there’s a clear view across Mirfield and the Calder Valley to the hills beyond, with patches of sunlight scudding gently across the landscape.

On the highest ground in the distance, there’s a white brilliance, which appears to be a powdering of snow.

A buzzard circles over Liley Wood, below us to the west.

Grey cloud and misty rain obscure the view for ten minutes or so, as a shower passes over.

Whitley Wood

Charlotte’s used to be a regular weekly destination for several years, when we’d head here on a Thursday morning for coffee and scones with my mum. She died a little over two years ago but, had she lived, we would have been celebrating her ninety-ninth birthday last Sunday. In fact, she once suggested that for her one hundredth birthday she would like treat all her family and friends to a gathering at Charlotte’s.

Her latest great-grandchild, Henry, is making his first visit here today, but he’s far too young to appreciate the ice cream.

A large spotted pig is contentedly snoring in its pen.

Also taking a break, there’s a pochard on the duck pond, sleeping with its bill tucked under its wing.

Link

Charlotte’s Real Jersey Ice Cream

Reed Bunting

7.55 a.m.: A male reed bunting perches on a dried up purple loosestrife stem then flies down to the edge of the pond and stays there for a minute, not apparently finding anything to feed on.

If it’s checking out our small pond, it isn’t impressed, as it flies up into the crab apple, joining the regular tits and finches for another minute or two before flying off towards the lower end of the wood, perhaps to drop in on Coxley Beck. It takes no interest in the bird feeders.

We can’t see an accompanying female.

Reed buntings are regulars in the marshy fields by the river half a mile away but it’s a rarity for us to spot one in the garden. In fact, I don’t remember recording one before; if so it must have been over twenty-five years ago.

Wrapping up Winter

View from Blacker Hall restaurant, 12th January.

It’s the last day, meteorologically speaking, of winter but at times it has seemed more like spring today. It’s a good time to go through my pocket sketchbook, to upload the drawings that didn’t made it into my posts.

The View from Brontë Tower

For so much of the winter, we’ve been preoccupied by medical matters, especially in Barbara’s brother John’s gradual recovery from a stroke at the beginning of December. He’s now back home and doing well.

The stroke unit at Dewsbury Hospital is on the fifth floor of the Brontë Tower, with views, on a clear day, of the tops of the Pennines. They were at their most striking one clear sunny morning, after a snow shower over the moor tops.

Shooter’s Nab (on the right).
Continue reading Wrapping up Winter

Pheasants in the Rain

Just time at 4.30 for a quick session drawing the pheasants that have been gleaning spilt sunflower seeds beneath the feeders for most of the day.

Working in fountain pen with regular ink speeds up the process of drawing. I’d normally use Noodlers waterproof ink because I find it so useful, being able to add a wash of watercolour without the ink running but, in the time available today, regular ink seems to flow more freely. Besides, I’m in the mood for a drawing with an inky quality to it. For once, I won’t add the red, green and red gold of the cock pheasant’s plumage.

60 seconds looking, 8 seconds drawing

I enjoyed watching The Great Painting Challenge from ZSL Whipsnade Zoo yesterday. The warm-up exercise that Pascal Anson gave the contestants, urging them to spend 60 seconds looking at the elephants, then only 8 seconds drawing, is more or less what I’m trying here – except without Pascal standing there with his stopwatch: the pheasants are so active that I’ve got no choice other than to try and take a mental snapshot of a pose, then draw the whole thing. But I do then work on the details of the plumage in short bursts.

Link

The Big Painting Challenge

Buzzards at Breakfast-time

8.00 a.m.: A sparrowhawk flies over the rooftops followed by a loose flock of smaller birds, which appear to be mobbing it. The sparrowhawk swoops down on one of them, but misses out on its breakfast.

On the sunflower heart feeders, a pair of bullfinches are joined by a siskin.

8.45 a.m.: A buzzard circles over farmland beyond the houses. Buzzards are such regulars now but because I first got familiar with them in the Lake District and on Speyside, at a time when they were far less common than they are today, they still conjure up a feeling of wild places for me. It’s great to be able to sit on the sofa with a mug of tea after breakfast and see one soaring in the distance.

First Frogspawn

We had a single clump of frogspawn in the pond yesterday; today there are thirteen.

The School of the Future

Back to the future: welcome to my school for the space age, as envisaged in my art homework in 1965. I was ahead of my time: that airy auditorium reminds me of the Scottish Parliament, which didn’t get built until forty years later. No wonder I felt so relaxed and at home, when we visited Holyrood last summer.

The Writing on the Wall

My high-tec teaching aids are now commonplace in the classroom: projectors, televisions and my analogue version of today’s computer-controlled whiteboards.

Each desk has its own reel-to-reel tape recorder but, typical of school, the pupils have to share: one between two.

Continue reading The School of the Future