Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Growing beside our compost bins, Smooth Sow-thistle, Sonchus oleraceus, is a common weed of disturbed ground.
The Collins flower guide mentions the ‘acute, spreading auricles’ at the base of the leaves as a diagnostic feature.
It steadily flopped as I drew it but since I finished it has perked up again, so I might get another chance to add a drawing of the shape of the leaf.
I’ve been scanning my Wakefield Market sketchbook for a fanzine-style publication and came across these fountain pen self-portraits.
I was trying to improve drawing figures and I set out several times a week in late autumn 1981 to draw on markets, in cafes and even on the bus there and back.
In some of the sketches of Barbara from that time she’s busy knitting but I’m not sure if this Aran sweater is one of hers or one my sister knitted for me.
I’m hoping that this acrylic on canvas, 5ft x 2ft painting of Wakefield Market might soon get a second showing as it was last exhibited in 1982.
I think this is my favourite corner of the painting. I can reveal that Barbara played the role of ‘old lady in striped coat’. I’d drawn a figure on location and took a Polaroid of Barbara in as near to the striped coat and dotted headscarf as I could find.
The painting is unfinished: that case should contain a random selection of 1970s/80s ladies’ shoes! I’d sketched a children’s tricycle on one of the stalls and was able to borrow a similar one from the Ebenezer Hall play group in Horbury to paint.
My ambition was to make it into a triptych, a wrap-around experience like the market itself, which was a bit of a maze in those days.
‘Cockney Mick’ Lawton had his fruit and veg stall at the entrance to the covered meat market. He spotted me drawing and liked the drawing, so I did a him a photocopy of it. In return he got one of his assistants to fill a small paper sack with every kind of fruit from the stall. He was going to send her around with another bag for a selection of veg too, but I told him it would take me a week to finish the fruit.
At that time the first row of stalls nearest the old Cathedral School were all fruit and veg. I sat on the wall in front of the school and thought I’d be able to work unseen. No such luck:
“Penny for the Guy, Mister?”
I made a deal, I’d give them a very small amount if they’d sit for me to draw them.
I’m guessing that Kelly, Banger and Mizzy are now successful entrepeneurs.