Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Another character from the Do You Say . . . ? ‘poem’ and all that I really know about ‘de Z cow’ is that she’s been known to ‘utter’ the occasional ‘grouse’. Could it be that she’s rather proud of her ancestry? If she really is ‘de Zeeland’ that’s not so far from Freisland, so she could be a pedigree Holstein Friesian.
More likely ‘DeZee’ is a randomly generated name-tag number and she probably usually gets called ‘Daisy’. I have a feeling that she won’t like that.
Summer is over, it's turning cool, It's time to go back to the Woodland School . . . Owl seems to be sleeping, but I've a hunch, He's dreaming of Dormouse for his lunch. Just one missing, and that's the Mole, Whoa! Here he comes now, popping up from his hole!
A birthday card for Florence (she’s the one in the woolly hat).
British summertime starts today and we’re making a start exploring our local patch. Rather than sketch or take photographs I’m drawing my comic strip from remembered details.
To try some unfamiliar features of Clip Studio Paint, I’ve followed a tutorial for drawing a black and white comic strip, adding tone, patterns and a sunburst effect to the frames. I drew using a graphics pad and desktop iMac, so my lines are wobbling about all over the place but I should now be able to do a final version on my iPad Pro.
I found this adult common shrew on one of the veg beds and my number one suspect for dispatching it has to be Basil a neighbour’s Himalayan Persian cat who currently seems to have exclusive hunting rights for our back garden. Shrews are distasteful so my guess is that Basil caught this one amongst the tussocks of grass in the meadow at the edge of the wood and abandoned it on his regular route back home.
Basil was making a half-hearted attempt to pounce on a hen pheasant yesterday, so a shrew wouldn’t present any challenges for him.
Shrews must 90% of their body weight in a day, but there are plenty of woodlice, spiders, beetles, slugs and worms in the meadow and around the edges of our back garden.
One of the Rodley Nature Reserve harvest mice, drawn from one of the photographs that I took there earlier this month. Hopefully this will make it into print next year in one of my Dalesman nature diaries.
With its meadows now full of wild flowers going to seed, Rodley Nature Reserve, to the west of Leeds, is a perfect habitat for harvest mice.
My photographs were taken in the visitor centre there where a large vivarium contains a captive colony. Since 2012, 900 harvest mice have been released here.
They build tennis-ball sized nests amongst the stems of reeds and grasses.
As it clambers about amongst vegetation, the harvest mouse uses its long tail to grasp stems.
Harvest Mouse Introduction at Rodley
Even by boosting the contrast, I can’t really pick out any definite tracks at the entrance to my animal tracking tunnel, which has now been sitting amongst the long grass by the hedge at the end of the garden for two days. The damp paper along the edges might have been nibbled by slugs.
As I moved in to take a close-up photograph, a vole ran out from the tunnel. It happened so quickly that I wondered if it really had been in there or whether it had been hidden in the grass at my feet but when I slid out the bait tray I could see that half the sunflower hearts had disappeared.
One of the sunflower hearts had been nibbled at one end to expose the seed inside.
In the milk bottle top that serves as a bowl for the bait something has been nibbling away at what I think might be fragments of peanuts in the peanut butter. Traces of slime suggest that slugs or snails have been visiting the tunnel.
I’ve topped up the bait with sunflower hearts, so my tracking tunnel has now become a vole feeding station.
It’s the final week of the University of York’s free online Future Learn course The Biology of Bugs, Brains and Beasts and for our ‘Beasts’ practical work, we’re using a homemade tracking to tunnel to discover – if it works – whether we’ve got rodents or hedgehogs in our back garden.
I’ve slotted two cut-down 4-pint plastic milk bottles to make the tunnel. Our long-handled stapler came in useful here.
I then covered the tunnel in black sugar paper because small mammals prefer darker places to forage. Black plastic would have been more weatherproof, but I had the sugar paper to hand.
Finally, using one of the milk bottle tops which I’d saved, I baited the tunnel with organic peanut butter and a few sunflower hearts from the bird feeder. That should be more than enough to tempt any passing rodent.
The sponge is soaked in green food dye and hopefully, in the morning, I’ll see a few small footprints on the paper. I’ve left it in the quietest part of the garden at the back of my little meadow area, in the long grass near the hedge. A small hole amongst the grasses at the far end of the tunnel might well be a vole hole.
How to make a tracking tunnel, backyard conservation with Ana.
The Future Learn Biology of Bugs, Brains and Beasts course run by the biosciences department of the University of York
As happens to me with so many farm animals, as soon as I tried to photograph him in a relaxed, natural pose, this White Shorthorn bull immediately stopped what he was doing – grazing – and looked straight at the camera with a suspicious ‘what are you doing?’ expression.
White Shorthorns are a rare breed, well adapted to being out in all weathers and here at Nethergill Farm in Langstrothdale they’re free to roam, either in the fields around the farm or on the open hillside beyond Oughtershaw Beck. They tend to have a daily routine, making their way down from their preferred overnight quarters towards the beck during the morning.
Along with some light grazing by a limited number of sheep, the White Shorthorns act as landscape managers here, rather like the Longhorns on the Knepp Wildland Project in West Sussex.
Wildlife projects at Nethergill include managing the meadows to encourage wild flowers, the woodland to encourage red squirrels and the beck for fish, insects, birds and the occasional visit by an otter.
Chris & Fiona Clark run the award-winning Eco-Farm at Nethergill but the bull belongs to a farmer friend of theirs in Cumbria – Gordon
“Gordon takes our calves when old enough,” Fiona tells me, “and we use his mature bulls to cosy up with our girls.
‘Trump’ is the new kid on the block, 2 years old. Probably weighs 700kg approx.
The ladies rule at Nethergill he sidles up to each female over several weeks.
His technique obviously worked as all bar 1 are in calf due this Summer.”
Nethergill Eco-Farm and Self Catering Accommodation in the Yorkshire Dales
Harvey is our joiner Simon’s border terrier, so I got another chance to draw him today as work on our new bathroom continued.
Harvey likes two things: to watch the world go by and to find a warm spot to settle down in, so our patio windows are a favourite for him; sometimes snoozing with head hidden behind the curtains for bit of extra seclusion.
