As usual, some of the star birds we’d hoped for, such as the great-spotted woodpecker and the sparrowhawk, didn’t put in an appearance as we completed this year’s hour of observation for the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch.
All but three of the eleven species that we recorded visited the bird feeders, currently stocked with peanuts, sunflower hearts and Peckish bird seed. A cock pheasant and a blackbird foraged down the garden while a dunnock hopped about at the foot of the hedge.
Around 50 wood pigeons suddenly flew up from the wood, perhaps disturbed by a sparrowhawk, but not one of them visited the garden.
The hill sheep I saw on an an archive ‘Look at Life’ film on Talking Pictures TV looked strikingly grey. The round-up was filmed in the Peak District, c.1960, so I don’t think these were some rare breed that I haven’t come across, it looked more as if they’d been downwind of the smoky chimneys of the Manchester’s textile mills and picked up a good sprinkling of soot.
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.
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.
Christmas Day
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.
Christmas Day sketches: holly, bay, Viola tricolor and a poorly chaffinch.
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.
Boxing Day Shoot, c.1962, Fred Green’s cottage. Fred Green, who I think is the figure in the centre, was the gamekeeper. The man in the beret, front row, right, is Eric Chalkley, who lived on Stanley Road, Wakefield and who, I believe, worked for the National Coal Board.
Boxing Day Walk
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.
Shepherd, Wakefield Mystery Plays
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.
Periwinkle growing in the hawthorn hedge.
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.
No mud this morning, the ground is frozen solid and the leaf litter and debris on the paths crunch like gravel as we walk up through the woodland of Emroyd Common. Hoar frost crystals have formed in a few patches in sheltered spots alongside a hedgerow and there are ferny patterns on car windscreens.
Two roe deer trot along at the edge of a pasture along the top edge of the wood.
For several days as we passed the houses at the top end of our lane, I’ve been scanning around to see if there was a buzzard or red kite circling. As we were beginning to suspect, it is actually a starling giving what to me seems like a passable impersonation of a buzzard mewing.
As we walk back through Emroyd we disturb a buzzard, which flies off down the slope through the oak woodland.
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.
The Sun claims dominion over it . . . the dried leaves shred small, and smoked as tobacco, helps those that have any cough* . . .”
Culpeper’s Herbal, Nicholas Culpeper, 1616 – 1654
*Please don’t try this at home!
This morning I bought an attractive 1983 Culpeper’s Colour Herbal from a charity bookstall but I’m sticking with my old version as it includes the full text, including the advice to smoke rosemary like tobacco if you have a cough!
As I walk up Coxley Valley on a misty morning, I’m surrounded autumn leaves so, thinking about a new logo for Willow Island Editions, I decide that leaves might have more graphic impact than the tree-on-an-island logo that I currently use.
I pick up four crack willow leaves from alongside where the beck splits, creating the willow island that I used as a name for my self-publishing imprint.
A windswept version might have a lively look but the logo also needs a solid hint of authority as I want readers to feel that they can trust the instructions in my walks booklets.
“In nature you’re surrounded simple but stunning copyright-free design”
As I sat with a latte and flapjack by the The Little Acorn, the coffee cabin at the top end of the wood, I felt that their pun of a logo shows that simpler can be better.
A woodcut-style ink drawing of the willow-leaf ‘W’ would be more punchy than using the soft autumn colours of the leaves themselves. It would also hint at my hand-drawn approach.
The reason that I’m rethinking the look of Willow Island Editions is because I’m transferring my 27-year old website, www.willowisland.co.uk, from regular HTML to WordPress.
I find that a quiet walk in the woods in the perfect way to clear my mind a bit and focus on design. In nature you’re surrounded simple but stunning copyright-free design.
