Alongside a track through fields of seedling oilseed rape there’s a stretch of hedge where many of the branches are encrusted with this yellow foliose (leaflike) lichen, Xanthoria parietina, sometimes called common orange lichen. It will grow on twigs, branches and stonework, even on painted surfaces, especially where extra nutrients are available – for instance from bird droppings. In this case the extra nutrients might come from overspray from the field and to a smaller extent perhaps from the exhaust from the occasional passing vehicle on this quiet country lane.
Smithy Brook has spilt over onto the pastures a the lower end of Hostingley Lane by the Go Outdoors store. A dabchick divves amongst the beck-side trees.
At the far end of Low Lane, a male blackbird with white head and a small patch of white on the shoulder.
Yesterday morning: a buzzard on a fence post.
A bit of rivalry amongst ponies in a muddy pasture on Sandy Lane.
There are plans to build 4 million homes on the green belt according to today’s Telegraph.
‘Sandstone causeway north west of Junction 39. Hawthorns and ash tree 8th March 1983.’
There’s a triangle of countryside at Broad Cut Farm, Calder Grove, near Wakefield, that has survived between to the river and the M1 where there’s a now plan to build a hundred of those homes plus 10 manufacturing units..
Google Maps 2024
The causey stone public footpath in my 1983 drawing was originally a colliery tram road, where horse-drawn trucks were taken to Hollin Hall Coal Staith just downstream from Broad Cut Lower Lock. There’s a row of six ‘Old Limekilns’ next to them.
1854 six-inch Ordnance Survey map, made available by the National Library of Scotland
The small building at ‘Th’ Owlet Lathe’ in the top right corner of the map was a dovecote.
I perched on the southbound side of motorway embankment in 1983 to draw it:
Room for 260 pairs of pigeons
A ruinous dovecote stans close to the motorway embankment at Owlet Laithes, just north of junction 39. It is built of handmade bricks on a ssandstone base which acted as a damp-course. The roof is of large Yorkshire stone (andstone) flags held on to a rough-hewn timber framework by wooden pegs.”
Unfortunately this old building disappeared within a few years of me drawing it.
Another colourised dip into the envelope of my negatives from 1964 and this one is a mystery. As I develop the other photographs I’ll get a better clue to the locations that I visited during that year. I still have a Letts’ Schoolboy’s Diary from that year which should give me some clues.
OS 10 inch rainfall map, 1881-1915, Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland, maps.nls.uk
You wouldn’t think it this morning but we live in a rainshadow area. This OS Rainfall Map from 1915 records over 60 inches average rainfall on the crest of the Pennines above Holmfirth and less than half that amount, around 24 inches down in Wakefield just 18 miles away.
So that’s about 5 feet of rain per year on the moors, 2 feet in Wakefield and getting on for 3 feet in between around Emley, where we’re heading this morning.
A rainy day proved a good opportunity to catch up with my Wild Yorkshire nature diary for The Dalesman but a trip to the Thorncliffe Farm Shop at Emley, gave us the excuse to see the outside world.
I drew these sycamores, almost devoid of leaves now, from the cafe.
I put the Chicken Superheroes artwork this morning but there were some familiar looking characters in the farm shop cafe . . .
It’s those Chickens again . . . (It’s a draft excluder, would go well with any chicken-themed interior design scheme)
It’s a perfect midsummer’s day for our walk from Wetherby alongside the River Wharfe, past Flint Mill Grange to Thorp Arch but we appreciate the shade of the Sustrans route along the old railway on the return leg.
Each bird has its favoured habitat. The song post for the yellowhammer in open farmland is on a phone line in contrast the blackcap makes a call that sounds like pebbles clacking together from the foliage of a tree in a deep, shady railway cutting. The warbler (willow?) prospects elegantly in the shrubs of a burgeoning hedgerow while the red kite swoops through parkland as we reach Thorp Arch.
