Latest card, for Alistair, who we’re hoping to meet up with at the London Wetlands Centre sometime soon. Of failing that Beckton Sewage Works is a bit of a biodiversity hotspot these day.
Autumn Migration
Category: Birds
Heron Fishing
10.15 am, sunny, slight breeze: A heron is patiently watching and stalking in the shallows by an old coot’s nest near the outlet of Newmillerdam Lake. This is an immature bird; it has moulted out of its brown juvenile plumage but still has a shade of grey on its neck. It has yet to grow its crest into the breeding adult’s pigtails.
But it’s successful with its watch, bend neck and lightning-fast stab technique of fishing, catching two small fish in the space of 5 or 10 minutes. The second fish seems to me to be rather squat, and I wondered if it might be a bullhead.
By the time that I move over to the Canada geese, gathering around someone feeding them near the main car park, my pen has stopped running freely, perhaps because there’s a bit of grease on my sketchbook page or the ink is running low. I bend down from the fishing platform and dabble the nib in the water. I like the transparent effect it gives to my drawing.
The tufted duck is so buoyant that it needs a little burst of power to push itself below the surface. It looks to me as if almost the whole duck jumps out of the water before diving sharply in headfirst, with legs ready to act as paddles to propel it deeper.
Gulls chasing Bat
10.52 am, Newmillerdam near main car park, sunny slight breeze: There’s a commotion amongst the black-headed gulls and a boisterous flock of 20 or 30 of them swoop and tumble over towards me from the outlet corner of the lake. At first I think that someone must be feeding the ducks and they’re falling out, as they do, over a snatched crust.
Then I notice that the pale brown ‘crust’ is moving about on its own account. My first thought is that for some reason the gulls have ganged up on a sparrow, but the manoeuvrability is un-sparrowlike and I wonder for a moment if it could be a late swallow or martin.
One of the gulls briefly captures it and it’s not until it escapes that I can see that it’s a small bat. It dodges around then escapes into the lakeside willows where the gulls can’t follow it and the gulls head off back towards the outlet.
Ode to a Duck
At last, the world premier of my cartoon inspired by the ducks, swans, geese, squirrels and monster pike seen on our Monday morning walks around Newmillerdam.
Staple Newk
We were lucky with the weather for our midweek break on the coast, although at windswept Staple Newk at RSPB Bempton Cliffs, I made sure that I clung tight to my sketchbook as I drew this gannet calling and spreading its wings at the top of the cliff, just yards below the viewing platform.
Lemurs, Llamas and Penguins
The ring-tailed lemurs at Sewerby Hall were eating the green leaves from bundles of freshly-cut bamboo. One perched, sitting upright, on a log and spread its arms to soak up the sun.
The llamas were also looking relaxed. This one, sitting munching with its companions in its paddock barely opened its eyes as I drew it.
The Humboldt penguins were more active, swimming around in their pool, twisting around to preen and scratch themselves.
After a few minutes they started making their way out of the pond, heading for a spot in the sun to dry off. Amongst them, Pickle (bottom left), still in her plain grey juvenile plumage. After initial enthusiasm, parents Sigsby and Twinny had started to neglect their incubation duties so the egg was transferred to an incubator and Pickle was hand-reared by head keeper John Pickering and his wife Tracey.
Link
New Humboldt Penguin chick arrives at Sewerby Hall and Gardens
Preening Canada Geese
The preening routine of a Canada goose involves Pilates-style stretching and twisting.
Dinobirds
When birds revert to their dinosaur origins . . .
Sharp-winged Teal
It’s a change to draw a duck that doesn’t need an an animated bill like the cartoon characters that I’ve been drawing recently, although as I drew I was listening to the great Yorkshire accent of one of the customers at the cafe who was giving a blow-by-blow account of his team’s weekend football match and thinking that he’d be perfect for one of my ducks.
Hobby and Little Stint
Dragonflies zoomed around us and rested briefly on the path as we made the full circuit of RSPB St Aidan’s reserve. They were flying high too and a hobby was making the most of it, arcing high above the reedbeds to catch and eat them on the wing.
A few spoonbills were resting amongst the reedbeds by one of the lagoons.
Alongside three ringed plovers on one of the lagoons was a little stint, a wader no bigger than a robin.
We took a break halfway around at the Rivers Meet Craft Cafe, crossing the railway at a level crossing by the former station and passing this Victorian postbox.
Just in case you couldn’t find everything you needed in the craft shop at the Rivers Meet, the Mobile Haberdashery van had called.
