Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
My Ode to a Duck animation is going to be a biodiversity hotspot: here are the latest recruits, the moorhen and coot. It’s surprising how these characters take on a life of their own: I’d never thought of a moorhen as being a bit of a spiv or of a coot being an ingenue.
For his waddle-on cameo in my Ode to a Duck cartoon, the wood pigeon is supposed to be empathic and concerned rather than ranting and irate, but, if you’re familiar with wood pigeons you’ll know that they have a limited repertoire.
The line work was drawn in Lamy fountain pen in my sketchbook. I’ve combined two of my sketches and coloured them in Photoshop. I kept testing the Photoshop PSD file in Adobe Character Animator, to make sure things were turning out more or less as intended.
I haven’t added the blink yet, as I did for the squirrel this morning, but this character is evidently the unblinking sort.
Next up, a foraging moorhen . . .
My latest Ode to a Duck screen test and the great-crested grebe is struggling with his motivation in scene 2.
Using Adobe Character Animator and Photoshop, I’ve used a sketchbook drawing as the basis for my ‘puppet’. So, just the beak-sync to add . . . all 14 mouth movements.
On Friday at St Aidan’s we saw spoonbill, ruff, heron and bittern. A birdwatcher suggested that the adult spoonbills from the small colony at Fairburn Ings fly over to St Aidan’s to take a break from the juveniles.
As the ruff had a black bill, it was probably a female. We’re now into the autumn migration, so hopefully we’ll see a few more waders at the shallower ponds.
Growing by watersides, reed canary-grass, Phalaris arundinacea, looks like a diminutive version of the common reed, Phragmites, and has been dubbed canal grass. At this time of year, some of the seedheads are flushed with purple, so it deserves its nickname of designer Phragmites.
Growing alongside the Phalaris, gipsywort, Lycopus europaeus, which has been in herbal medicine and to produce a black dye.
There are dozens of dragonflies about and a few butterflies, including this common blue, taking a brief rest on the path.
T'was the last week of summer And, down by the lake, We hear the sad quack Of a hungry old drake.
The grebes and the tufted ducks Dabble and dive But our poor drake is struggling Just to survive.
The foraging moorhen
Has plenty of luck,
But that doesn't extend
To the desolate duck.
In the woods, the grey squirrels
Eat beech-nuts galore,
But our poor drake is starving
Down here on the shore.
I know what you’re thinking:
‘I’ll give him some bread!’ –
But just one mouldy bread crust
Can leave a duck dead.
This ode to a duck Might not be the best, But what were you expecting? - I'm not Colin West!
Cartoon ducks drawn at Newmillerdam this morning. We didn’t see any drake mallards in breeding plumage, so my guess is that they’re all in eclipse plumage, and we’ll see their true colours appear in the autumn.
Time to test my new trail cam by positioning it below the bird feeders and sprinkling a few crumbs and mealworms on the lawn.
The wood pigeon took 36 selfies and even photobombed the dunnock’s brief appearance.
Also captured on camera, a blackbird, house sparrow and what we think was a song thrush.
Next test is on the video setting through the night . . .
Out of the goose feather quills that I’ve cut, my favourite is the thinnest and most flexible, so it’s quite suited to the curvy shapes of ducks, willow branches and alder leaves, drawn this from a fishing platform at Newmillerdam.
But it isn’t practical for field work because the ink goes on so thickly that I can’t close the sketchbook. Over three hours later I’ve put it on the scanner and blots of ink have stuck to the glass.
Even carrying back my open sketchbook I managed to leave my thumbprint on the wet ink of the drawing. It’s part of what makes drawing with a quill more spontaneous than drawing with my usual fountain pen, but for field sketches, that’s what I’ll be going back to.
Trying out some Zeiss Victory 8×32 binoculars and they’re impressive for looking at the sparrows, goldfinches and tits on the feeders but if it’s cool enough tomorrow I look forward to taking them out on location on an RSPB reserve.
It looks like being a clear night, so I’ll turn them on the night sky, with a waxing moon and the ‘Summer Triangle’ of the bright stars Deneb, Vega and Altair over the wood, so we’ll be looking towards the Milky Way. The the ratio of magnification to the size of the objective lenses, 8×32, gives them good light-gathering powers, better than the same binoculars in the more powerful 10×32 version.
They’re equally impressive for close-ups: at 6ft 4inches tall, I can’t quite focus on my feet, but if there was a dragonfly on the ground just three feet in front of me I could easily focus on that.
Take a 90-second break with elegant gulls, dabbling coots, preening ducks and a hesitant pigeon on a quiet backwater near the Boathouse at Newmillerdam Country Park, Wakefield, West Yorkshire.
It was too windy to safely draw on the cliff top on our day trip to Flamborough on Tuesday, so these are puffins from our last month’s visit. A few were sitting together on a steep grassy slope in an inlet overlooking North Landing. When we visited on Tuesday there was just one, sitting tightly on a rocky ledge nearby.