Category: Dales

The Riverside Hide

juvenile siskinwoodpecker sketch12.28 p.m.: The male great spotted woodpecker arrives but he’s out of luck: five crows have just been down to the feeding station and they’ve knocked the fat ball feeder off the post.

A young siskin, so streaky that I wondered if it was a redpoll, joins the adult males on the niger feeder. In their bright, neat plumage the males look as if they’re in uniform and ready to be assertive, in contrast the juvenile fades into the background and appears innocuous and inoffensive. The wing stripes and a hint of green in the tail give a hint of the neater adult plumage to come.

Waterfall in Watercolour

oughtbeck2.20 – 4 p.m.: I finish the pen drawing and start adding watercolour to my drawing of the little waterfall where Oughtershaw Beck crosses and exposure of limestone. I start with the lightest colour which is the pale ochre grey of the limestone then I add the brighter yellow green of the moss before going on to the water, the face of the rock that is in the shade and the darker green patches of moss.

I try to give some impression of the solidity of the rock but realise that if I take things too far I will lose the sparkle of the water so on my third top left to bottom right progress across the drawing with my series of watercolour washes, I decide that is enough and anyway it’s time to go back to Nethergill for a pot of tea and some homemade flapjack. Wish I had more time for this kind of drawing!

The wood avens that I spotted the other day in the turf on the river bank at my feet as I sat in this same spot appears to have been washed away but birdsfoot trefoil is still in flower and there are leaves of lady’s mantle, also plantain and at least one species of sedge.

Walk to Swarthghyll

The late afternoon thunderstorm isn’t as heavy as those we’ve had on previous days so we take a walk across the moor to the next farm up the valley on a calm pearly evening. The buzzard sits calling on the same post that it was on the other day.

reed buntingIt’s impossible to do this walk without seeing several meadow pipits sitting on fence posts or on the power lines but it’s worth checking out every bird on a post. One of them turns out to be a male reed bunting, a new bird for our Nethergill list. I don’t remember seeing it in previous years.

curlewThe curlews are calling over the buttercup meadows by the beck. A pied wagtail perches on the power line at Swarthghyll. Northern marsh orchids are in fresh flower on the tree-lined track to the farm. There’s a reminder of more everyday scenes: wood pigeon and mallard in the field by the bird hide.

Semerwater

mosswallcowWe start our walk around Semerwater at the hamlet of Stalling Busk. The former school is now the village hall and next door a former garage is the tasting room for Raydale Preserves.

Primroses are fading away but hawthorn blossom is still at its most luxuriant. Northern marsh orchids, ragged robin and yellow rattle grow in a wet flush at the lakeside.

hawthornA song thrush includes a whistle in its repertoire that sounds very like the whistles of a farmer to his (or her) sheepdog. A curlew pipes its agitated call.

A large toad trundles across a shady luxuriant path by a gully near the ruined church.

Luckily for us a thunderstorm struggles to get over the hill from the neighbouring dale. Our friend Roger, a mountain leader, points out the change in the direction of the wind as we walk up Raydale. Although the towering clouds are threatening to come towards us, the winds are sweeping in sideways, then turning back towards the storm, pushing it back.semervale

Bilberry Wood

bilberry wood
Rushes and common cotton-grass growing amongst the bilberries at the edge of the wood.
Milkwort, growing by a small tributary stream running into Oughtershaw Beck.
Milkwort, growing by a small tributary stream running into Oughtershaw Beck.

The hummocky ground layer of Bilberry Wood is carpeted, as its name suggests, with bilberry which is dripping with globular pink flowers, a few of which are beginning to set berries. It has flourished in the years since the wood was fenced off to prevent sheep grazing here.

Recently red squirrels have moved into the wood. They have been caught on camera attracted to feeding boxes (see link below).

green-veined whiteBumble bees are busy in the wood but on the strips of acid grassland around it small heath butterflies are the most conspicuous insects, flitting about over damp sedgey ground pockmarked with the hoof-prints of sheep and cattle. Two green-veined whites have paired up and come to rest among the grasses, giving us a chance to take some close-up macro shots.

red damselflies

In a calm section of Oughtershaw beck, large red damselflies, Pyrrhosoma nymphula, are laying their eggs, perching on a leaf of pondweed, Potamogeton.

Link: Red Squirrels in Bilberry Wood

Red squirrels at a nut feeder in Bilberry Wood, Nethergill.

Langstrothdale

Nethergill Farm, Langstrothdale
Nethergill Farm, Langstrothdale, yesterday morning as the sun failed to clear the low cloud.

Nethergill Farm, 1.10 p.m.: Cumulus clouds are towering over Langstrothdale and the thunderstorms that the forecast suggested were a possibility would now be welcome as even here in the shade of the old barn the temperature is climbing into the high seventies Fahrenheit, 25 C.

A cuckoo is calling on the far side of the valley. Meadow pipits are the birds we see most often on the road across the moor to Hawes, so it will have plenty of nesting pairs in its territory.

The farm’s resident blackbird sings from the ash tree, which is covered in sprays of blossom, which is now going over, and freshly sprouted bright green fronds of leaves.

Goldfinches chatter excitedly in its canopy. A gentle breeze sighs as it passes across the valley ahead of the gathering cloud but does nothing to freshen the atmosphere.

A pheasant explodes in a brief grockle of indignation, flies murmur, a cockerel crows: a strangulated wail. The hens here at Nethergill farm ‘are still learning’ so Fiona added an extra egg to the small but deep yellow yoked half dozen that she gave us in our welcome pack for our self-catering apartment, the Hay Mew. Also included, slices of her homemade flapjack which has been enticing Dales Way walkers to take a break here for the last five years.

Swarthghyll

buzzard2.45 p.m., Bilberry Wood, Langstrothdale: We could hear a buzzard mewing but couldn’t spot one circling or perching in the pines on the far side of the beck; it was on the moorland edge on the slope beyond, perching on a fence-post. It was still there and still calling when we walked back, half an hour later.

starling3 p.m.: Starlings nest beneath the roof tiles at Swarthghyll Farm, Langstrothdale. House martin and swallow fly in at the barn window below.

green-veined white3.20 p.m.: A green-veined white is sunning itself on a bank by the track across the moor, after a brief chase with a rival. It has fine dark veins on its upper wings but lacks the spots and borders that you see on many white butterflies (including most green-veined whites). A brief glimpse of the veins of its underwing helps confirm that it really is a green-veined.

pied wagtail5 p.m. riverside hide, Nethergill Farm: A pied wagtail feeds amongst the rocks on the beck, which is running low. It flies vertically to snap an insect in mid-air, then switches its attention to the beck-side pasture, darting to pick up insects from the clumps of rushes.

Sandpiper

Oughtershaw BecksandpipersEvery time we drive over the cattle grid, a sandpiper pipes at us in obvious annoyance and arcs around in an ostentatiously level flight, flashing its wing-stripes. It’s on sentry duty again this afternoon as we walk down the track. It perches on a fence post to pipe at us until we leave its marshy patch but a little further along a pair of sandpipers fly up from the rushes alongside Oughtershaw Beck.

We find a spot downstream where we can sit at the beck-side, undisturbed by waders. The beck, which is rather low at present, plunges over a bed of limestone. The blocks and cracks remind me of the clints and grykes of the limestone pavement at Malham Cove.

Oughtershaw BeckWhen I’m drawing a subject like this which is almost abstract with its interlocked, repetitive shapes, I keep finding distinctive features to act as landmarks as I map out the adjacent sections of the formation, briefly giving them names so that I can plot a point as “level with ‘The Brow'” or “directly below ‘The Triangle'”.

I’m wishing that I had a length of string so that I could strap my spiral bound sketchbook around my neck. I really wouldn’t like it to drop in the beck.

As I look down I notice water avens growing from the turf that projects out over the water. Here, probably somewhat beyond easy reach for browsing sheep, there are probably half a dozen species within a square foot, including lady’s mantle, birdsfoot trefoil, plantain and a sedge.

Redstart and Redpoll

redstart6 p.m.: perching on a tree guard by the edge of the birch wood alongside Oughtershaw Beck, a male redstart sits preening. It occasionally darts up for insects.

redpollOnce again siskins outnumber other birds at the feeders. A more unusual visitor is a redpoll. It isn’t much bigger than the siskins and is considerably smaller than the occasional goldfinches and chaffinches which fly in to feed.

Tawny Owlet

tawny owl chick

owletThere’s a single tawny owl chick sitting in the morning sun perching on the lower section of the barn door. The owls have nested under the roof beam in the barn, stuffing sticks into the end of a piece of sacking that had been draped beneath.

The resident blackbird scolds it. This is the farmyard’s resident blackbird that, Fiona tells us, has been angry ever since it arrived.

Greenfield Valley

low cloud

Bird's-eye primrose
Bird’s-eye primrose

The sun struggles to get through the low cloud over Langstrothdale and it never breaks through at all in the next dale, the Greenfield Valley.

We see pied and grey wagtails at Oughtershaw Beck then head up the slope towards Pewet Moss where bird’s-eye primrose, lousewort and butterwort grow in the boggier patches.

The plantations on the far side of the hill, on the slope down into the Greenfield Valley, have been clear-felled so what used to be a shady ride between conifers is now a track across an open slope.

We sit on a couple of sawn off stumps to take a break for a flask of coffee and look out over a slope that has already been planted out with conifer saplings. Each sapling is planted on a scooped up mound which prevents its roots becoming waterlogged.

langstrothdale

water avensThere are chaffinch and blackbirds about, birds that will probably find the open habitat more to their liking than the dense stands of conifers that stood here a year ago. Jackdaws call over pastures in the valley.

Water avens (right) grows alongside one of the gills draining into the Green Field Beck.

 

Lithostrotion

lithostrotionlithostrotionThe track has been repaired with crushed limestone. A few of the fragments are full of fossils, including the rugose coral Lithostrotion (above & left).

Another fragment (below) contains the valve of a brachiopod shell and a cross section of another type of coral, divided by septa which radiate from a central point.

fossilsLimestone Pavement

Greenfield valleyWe take another short break by the limestone pavement in the Greenfield Valley where I sketch Beckermonds Farm.

Common spotted orchids are in flower amongst the grasses near the exposures of limestone.

On our walk back via Oughtershaw village we see spotted flycatcher. The narrow roadside verges in front of the drystone walls are full of red campion, Herb Robert, water avens and dogs mercury.

Dales Birds

courtyardlittle owl1.45 p.m.: Getting myself in holiday mood, I sketch the view from the Courtyard Brasserie, near Settle, looking west over the grassy embankment of the Skipton/Settle railway. Swallows are nesting under the end of the roof on the gable end of the barn, perching and preening on the lines of bunting hanging over the courtyard.

2.30 p.m.: A little owl perches on a roadside fence post, in Horton in Ribblesdale.

siskins5.30 p.m., Nethergill Farm, Langstrothdale: With their characteristic single-mindedness, siskins are feeding on niger seed at the beck-side hide. The males are in such glowingly green plumage that they look as if they’ve been freshly painted.

A curlew probes the turf amongst the rushes by a bend in the beck.

curlew

Drawn to the Dales

 

My January Dalesman article

‘It would be a pity if he disappeared to Yorkshire & just wrote for the Dalesman’

That was the typically wry comment of my professor, Brian Robb, head of illustration, as he looked through my folio at the Royal College of Art in March 1975. So, with apologies to Brian, you can probably guess what I’ve been writing for the last three years?

This month's Dalesman includes spectacular photographs of the waterfall at Malham Cove, following persistent rains at the beginning of December. A once in a lifetime event.
This month’s Dalesman includes spectacular photographs of the waterfall at Malham Cove, following persistent rains at the beginning of December. A once in a lifetime event.

With this January article, I’m starting the fourth year of my Wild Yorkshire nature diary for the monthly magazine, described as the parish magazine for the whole of Yorkshire by Alan Bennett. As my deadline is always four or five weeks ahead of the month in question, I’ve based my articles on the observations and sketches in my online Wild West Yorkshire nature diary, which I started on Sunday 4 October 1998.

I’ve kept the focus of my Dalesman diaries on the kind of things that anyone can see in Yorkshire if they get out and about in their local patch and explore gardens, country parks, woodlands, waterside and moor. Now I’m ready to go a little further . . .
Northern EnglandHere at Middlestown, five miles south west of Wakefield, close to where Coxley Beck joins the Calder, I’m well placed for heading for the hills with four National Parks – the Peak District, the Yorkshire Dales, the North York Moors and the Lake District – and I mustn’t ignore the Vales of York, Pickering and Mowbray, the Humber Estuary and the Yorkshire Coast.

I should be able to find plenty of material for next year’s Wild Yorkshire diary!

Semerwater

Hawes High Street from the Bay Tree cafe.
Hawes High Street from the Bay Tree cafe.

oystcatcherThe level of the lake is up compared to last year but tide-marks of dry sedgy debris show that it can rise by another five or six feet. Oystercatchers call at the top, marshy end of the lake.

dipperA dipper perches on the bridge as we get back to the farm then flits off upstream.

kestrelOn the drive back to Hawes, I see a kestrel fly to the corner of a field barn to enter by a square opening, just below the roofline, which I guess must be an owl window.

Sandpipers

sandpiper preeningsandpiper feedingRiverside hide, Nethergill Farm, Langstrothdale, 3.45p.m.; A common sandpiper preens itself on a rock on the far bank of the beck then it sets off probing along the edge of the river.

It’s joined by a second bird, which trots off up the grassy bank while the first bird continues downstream.

sandpipersA pied wagtail perches on rocks in the beck, flitting out to take invertebrates from amongst the pebbles.