Category: Birds

The Raven in the Bailey

ravenKnaresborough Castle, North Yorkshire: ‘Why would they keep ravens at a castle?’ I ask Isabella, Her Majesty’s Keeper of the Ravens, Duchy of Lancaster, ‘because they did from back in medieval times?’

She explains that there is no documentary evidence to suggest that anyone was paid specifically for the role at the Tower of London in medieval times; it appears to be a story told by the Victorians to visitors to the Tower but perhaps they had some inkling of a genuine tradition.

There are plenty of legends; ravens were sacred to Brân the Blessed of Celtic legend whose head was said to have been buried on Tower Hill, long before William the Conquerer built his bastion there. There’s a nice story that the Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed, begged Charles II to employ someone to control the ravens at the Tower that were leaving their droppings on his telescope.

Door in the keep, Knaresborough Castle.
Door in the keep, Knaresborough Castle.

Perhaps ravens were valued for the work they did in scavenging around castles.

A Puddle in the Park

black-headed gullCorner of the duck ponf2.30 p.m., 13ºC, 55ºF, blustery winds and continuous showers from the west: Forty or fifty black-headed gulls flock down when children scatter breadcrumbs by the semi-permanent puddle alongside the duck pond at Thornes Park. I spot only one gull with the full chocolate brown mask of its summer plumage; some have just a dark dot behind the eye, others are at a halfway stage.

I draw a gull in flight which has a black band at the end of its tail but when I look up again every gull has a pure white tail. I’m start to think that I must have been mistaken but I must have seen a juvenile which – so my field guide tells me – does have a black band at the end of its tail. The colour of the feet and of the bill also vary between adults and juveniles.

Canada geese
Canada geese

mallard drakeIt’s such a dull rainy afternoon and I’m sheltering in the car putting the wipers on a occasionally so I’m not seeing the birds in glowing colour. I have to admit that the green of the drake mallard’s head is really informed guesswork. In this light, to me it just looks dark.

moorhen

I wind down the window to get a better view of the moorhens which are poddling around the muddy margins of the puddle, picking up scraps.

A Hole in the Hedge

habitat pile

‘the twisted gorse on the cliff edge, twigs, like snakes, lying on the path, the bare rock, worn and showing though the path, heath hits, gorse burnt and blackened, the high overhanging hedges by the steep roads, which pinch the setting sun, mantling clouds, and the thunder, the deep green valleys and the rounded hills – and the whole structure simple and complex.’

Graham Sutherland,
Notes by the Artist, Tate Gallery, March 1953

On a walk alongside the hedge banks near the Pembrokeshire coast, Graham Sutherland came across a gap in the hedge that particularly appealed to him.

‘I may have noticed a certain juxtaposition of forms at the side of a road, but on passing the same place next time, I might look for them in vain. It was only at the original moment of seeing that they had significance for me.’

‘If at first I attempted to make pictures here on the spot,’ he recalled, ‘I soon gave this up . . . I found that I could express what I felt only by paraphrasing what I saw.’

robin in the holly3.30 p.m., 7ºC, 45ºF; For my hole in the hedge, on a showery afternoon, I go to the trouble of setting up my pop-up tent at the end of the garden. A robin hops into the hedge seven feet away from my and eyes me suspiciously. Perhaps because I’m so used to watching birds through the double-glazing of the patio doors, its colour seems more vivid at close range.

pheasantAlso eyeing me suspiciously is the cock pheasant who strolls through the meadow, pauses at the hole in the hedge and decides that he’ll give me a wide berth.

Link: Paintings and Drawings by Graham Sutherland, Tate Gallery. In his statement, I wonder what Sutherland meant by ‘heath hits’. Perhaps a typo. In the context, I assumed that ‘steep rods’ should have read ‘steep roads’.

Birdbath

pheasantsrobin3.45 p.m.: Three female pheasants walk up the wood-chip path to peck at spilt sunflower hearts beneath the bird feeders.

blackbird bathingA robin’s bathing routine is interrupted by a blackbird, a more enthusiastic bather.

Two male and one female blackbird patrol the lawn. The female comes lower in the pecking order and is seen off by one of the males when she darts forward to pick up a morsel.

female blackbird female blackbird

January Sketchbook

A second gallery of pages which didn’t make it into my daily posts, taken from my Dove Grey A5 landscape Pink Pig sketchbook.

  • New year's day: a morning walk at Nostel Priory.

Sage Advice

sage sketch

Nostell Priory Lake: A pair of mallards makes careful progress over an expanse of ice between two areas of open water. After a minute or so the female decides that it will be quicker to fly.

Focus on Teapots

teapotWe spot our friend Roger in the cafe, so naturally the conversation comes around to photography. Focussing on a teapot, I ask him how I can get over the problem that when I use my bridge camera, a Fujifilm FinePix S6800, on macro setting I have to get in so close that the proportions of my subject get distorted: the spout looks jumbo sized.

teapotsYou need use a bit of zoom, suggests Roger. That works, the spout is now in proportion with the teapot, but, with my shaky hands, I’ve got a problem: the zoom magnifies any camera shake and the smaller aperture of the lens means that the camera will be selecting a longer shutter speed, again increasing the risk of blur.

FujiFilm FinePix S6800I tell Roger that I’m considering upgrading to a camera with image stabilisation and he tells me that my camera probably has that as an option. He drills down through the menus and sets it to always use sensor shift image stabilisation. It’s a well hidden option and looking back through the settings menu, I can’t now see where he found it.

Depth of Field

rosemarysageBut it works. I hand-held the camera for this shot of rosemary in a stone trough in the courtyard. Introducing a bit of telephoto to a macro shot results in a smaller depth of field than I’d get at the wide angle end of my zoom lens, throwing the background out of focus and giving more emphasis to the subject.

I use the photograph of the sage as reference for my sketchbook page for today. I’m reading a couple of books on botanical art so I decide to try drawing in 4H and then HB pencil before adding the watercolour, lightest shades first, which in this case is the pale yellow of the stipples on the leaves.

lemon yellowsI’ve just replaced the Winsor lemon in my pocket watercolour box. As Winsor lemon is no longer available I went for cadmium lemon.

herbThis green-leaved herb looks like marjoram or oregano. I cropped my original photograph to show this detail because I couldn’t get in this close with the macro. There’s a limit to how far you can zoom in before the auto-focus ceases to work. A red box marked ‘AF’ appears centre screen. I found that I had to zoom back out a little before the auto focus would work successfully.

 

Soaring Around Town

peregrine, meadow and loosestrife.2 p.m.: Peregrine flying past the town hall, over Wood Street, Wakefield, heading in the direction of the cathedral.

4.30 p.m.: Two weeks or so after the shortest day, the light already seems to be lingering longer in the afternoons. It helps that today has been a lot brighter than the wet, overcast days that we’ve had so much of recently.

The purple loosestrife seed heads were drawn with a dip pen, using Winsor & Newton peat brown ink.

Birds on a Wet Afternoon

birds on the feedersIt’s so dim this afternoon that I can’t make out all the colour on the great tits, blue tits, goldfinches and siskins coming to the feeders and I’m determined not to saturate the colour by adding what I know must be there in the gloom, such as the yellow wing bars and red mask of the goldfinch.

Bird Shapes

bird shapes10.20 am, looking south-east; as I drew the view of Coxley Valley from my studio window, the last traces of the overnight frost faded from the meadow and the pearly hint of mistiness in the air dissolved away.

I decided on a change from my usual pen first, then watercolour technique and tried looking at the great tits, blue tits and greenfinches coming to the sunflower heart feeders as coloured shapes. I watched each bird until it moved then tried to get the whole pose on paper with a freshly sharpened HB pencil. If I could practice this a bit more, I think it would give me a grasp of the shapes of birds which I don’t take on board in the same way when I’m adding details in pen.

Pheasants

pheasants and blackbirdsThere were eight blackbirds in the garden this morning. The lawn is the main gathering ground but now that the crab apples are starting to turn soft there will occasionally be one in the tree. Wood chip paths and a cotoneaster bush dripping with berries give them further foraging opportunities.

Star of the show is the ring-necked pheasant with white streaks on his crown. A female gives him the opportunity to puff himself up and display his plumage. As I add the colour, I can’t decide whether his tail coverts are grey or a very pale green. I get Barbara to take a look and we decide that the exact shade changes depending on how the fine feathers catch the light but the colour really is a sage grey-green.