Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Latest trail cam shots from our back garden: pheasants, blackbird, a pair of robins and – what are you doing there?! – Butch (yes, he really is called Butch), next door’s Labrador but my favourite shot is the wood pigeon at dawn, looking hopefully up at the feeders.
With the end of meteorological winter is less than a couple of weeks away this is my last chance to complete some of the seasonal tasks in the garden. There’s no shortage of tidying up jobs such as weeding veg beds and clearing paths but they can wait. More urgently, I need to trim this corner of the hawthorn/holly hedge to more manageable proportions before the birds start nesting.
It won’t be long before the frogs gather to spawn in the pond again, so I’d like to clear out some of the duckweed, overgrown plants and fallen leaves before they return.
To give our autumn-fruiting raspberries the best chance I want to dig them up before growth gets started again, raise the level of the raised bed with riddled compost, replant them and finally cut them down to ground level.
There’s more cutting back needed behind the shed too before birds, such as our resident dunnocks, start nesting.
Robins outnumbered any other bird at the start of our garden birdwatch this morning. A pair of robins were working their way around the border by the hedge, just a couple of yards away from a single robin on the patio. Robins defend winter territories so I’m surprised that they were tolerating each other. One great tit was on the sunflower feeders with two female pheasants foraging below.
Later two great tits were coming to the sunflower seed feeders, one with a kipper tie of a black breast-streak – the male – the other with a modest pencil tie – the female.
Our total bird count of 28 was close to the national average (27) and our number one bird was the house sparrow with 6 individuals but that was probably an underestimate as they were constantly to and fro from feeders to hawthorn hedge.
Two female sparrows were pecking at the mortar of next door’s conservatory wall. No structural damage evident so far.
By the way, during yesterday’s amber alert for Storm Éowyn, our strongest storm for 10 years, one of our roof tiles was dislodged. We got off lightly compared with Ireland, parts of Wales and Scotland where red ‘danger to life’ warnings were issued.
The teasel has collapsed under 2-3 inches of overnight snow.
Three female pheasants join the goldfinches, house sparrows, blue tits, great tits, blackbirds, nuthatch and robin at the bird feeders.
They appear to hear a noise and freeze in alert mode. They remain motionless for five minutes or more, gradually relaxing, as if it’s a pheasant meditation session – an ideal opportunity to draw them.
At 3.30 pm the pheasants head off towards the wood as the light fades.
The male couldn’t quite get past the female pheasant as they came down the garden path this morning.
He strikes out to treat her to his magnificent display as he struts across the frozen pond.
But as soon as he steps onto the ice he sinks into the icy water in a gap at the edge.
He recovers as best he can and careers onwards over the ice.
The femle seems inimpressed as she ambles across the frosted lawn towards the bird feeders.
Amongst the regular birds at the feeders late this afternoon, a female blackcap – with a reddish rather than a black cap like the male – which fended off the sparrows and blue tits from the sunflower hearts feeder but deferred to the robin.
It returned later and was the last bird at the feeders. By then the light had faded so much that we needed binoculars to pick out the colours.
Recent winds had resulted in the water level in the pond dropping. Yesterday’s rain topped it up to its fullest, overflowing level and last night’s frost froze it over.
My favourite gardening gloves are worn through at the fingers, so a good subject for another textures drawing for my Procreate Dreams course.
The various texture brushes will have their uses but I like to be in control so my favourite way of creating a texture is to hand draw it, in this case with Procreate’s Dry Ink brush.
Seedheads of common knapweed, Centaurea nigra, from my patch of wildflower meadow at the end of the garden.
A couple of these striking-looking flies – black with sunburst spots on the wing bases – were basking around the ivy flowers in the south-facing shelter of the walled garden at RSPB Saltholme.
The female Noon Fly, or Noonday Fly, Mesembrina meridiana, lays a single egg on horse or cow dung. The larva is a predator, feeding on other fly larvae in the dung.
Growing beside our compost bins, Smooth Sow-thistle, Sonchus oleraceus, is a common weed of disturbed ground.
The Collins flower guide mentions the ‘acute, spreading auricles’ at the base of the leaves as a diagnostic feature.
It steadily flopped as I drew it but since I finished it has perked up again, so I might get another chance to add a drawing of the shape of the leaf.