Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Struggling to draw garden birds flitting around the feeders, I realise why I like to get out drawing ducks, geese and swans resting and preening at the water’s edge.
As these smaller birds move so quickly, my aim is to just watch one of them until it flits away then attempt to draw the whole pose in one quick drawing.
A goldfinch at the feeder can be there for a minute but a blue tit can be in and out in less than a second. Sparrows usually settle for longer, which is helpful as each one has slightly different plumage, the males particularly: the face and ‘bib’ markings vary a lot.
Drawing whatever bird comes along for an hour or so is quite a session but if I could keep doing that I think it would improve my ability to observe.
Drawing from a photograph or a stuffed bird would be a good way to take in the smaller details but to get an impression of the life and individual character of a bird I need to stick with these flitting about garden birds.
It must be decades since I last opened this old Quality Street tin, stowed away in the attic.
No box lid and I don’t remember the subject – a joust perhaps – so we’re going to have to reconstruct this piece by piece . . . starting with the edges.
Why the punched hole in the centre of the tin lid? Did we keep string in the tin?
Writing Christmas cards is now often the only time of year when I settle into an extended session of writing with a fountain pen. Normally I alternate between pen and keyboard for blog posts or articles.
It takes a while until I settle into a rhythm. My shaky hands and the rather worn joints in my right thumb don’t help me feel at ease but, if I happen to get into the flow, for a while it can feel natural and comfortable.
The trouble is that I’m never sure how I managed to get myself into this flowing and relaxed mode of writing. That’s partly because, once I’ve got going, I’ve moved on from attempting to consciously control it. I’ve switched to a kind of muscle memory.
I stop worrying about wobbles and shakes and badly formed letters. I can even get to the stage where a capital ‘S’ doesn’t feel like too much of a challenge!
My training in graphic design has left me fascinated by fonts. I’m keen to observe every nuance of an individual letterform but that’s not going to help me get in the flow if I’m constantly changing gear to draw each letter as a separate entity.
For the past four or five months, Barbara and I have been regulars at a weekly Tai Chi session and we’ve both found that the relaxed attention that’s needed to follow the flowing moves has been helpful.
I see parallels between the practice of Tai Chi and the process of handwriting. Our teacher Pat is keen that we should get the moves right from the start, rather than fudging through and getting in the flow but potentially developing bad habits which might be difficult to correct later.
10.50 a.m., Carr Lodge Park, Horbury
“Is that a red kite?” I ask Barbara, because it doesn’t sound quite right to me.
“No, it’s a buzzard,” she suggests.
I scan around but I can’t see one circling.
We’re both wrong: a dozen starlings are gathering in the tree tops at the edge of the park. Amongst the usual soft starling chatter, one of the birds is, every now and then, giving a passable impression of the peevish mewing of a buzzard.
The low sun can’t cast shadows this morning as it shines through a veil of cloud. There’s no halo, caused by ice crystals in the upper atmosphere, so I’m guessing that these are alto stratus – mid-range stratus clouds. They’re at the leading edge of a warm front which this morning is sweeping in from the Atlantic across Ireland.
As I write this up later, just after sunset, the front has arrived and rain is lashing on my studio window.
Met Office as well as predicted forecasts, the Met Office website enables you to go back through the previous 24 hours to see maps of actual observations of rainfall, temperature, windspeed, cloud cover and lightning strikes.
Yorkshire colour swatches for a Dalesman article that I’m working on. Unfortunately it hasn’t been so colourful today.
The hill-top ruin is Sandal Castle where Richard of York gave battle in vain, resulting in the mnemonic for remembering the traditional colours of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.
There’s some discussion about whether indigo should really be in there. It’s a useful colour in my larger watercolour box but I’m not sure whether I can really see it in a rainbow.
