Category: Meadow

Rabbit Ings

On a cool breezy morning at Rabbit Ings country park, Royston, South Yorkshire, the only butterflies we see on our walk with Wakefield Naturalists’ Society are a small copper and dingy skipper which are sheltering on the south-facing bank of a ditch. They soon flit away and most of the wild flowers I film are equally restless, as they’re buffeted about by the wind.

Rabbit Ings country park is centred on the restored spoil heap of Monckton colliery. As you follow the path along the contour of the hill from the far end, a distant view of the gritstone moors of the Peak District opens up to the south-west, beyond Barnsley.

I’m guessing that the mystery object in my YouTube movie is a fox scat. It doesn’t look quite right for a short-eared owl pellet.

Links; Rabbit Ings Country Park

Wakefield Naturalists’ Society

Town End Farm Shop

View from Town End Farm shop cafeTown End Farm Shop, Airton, Malhamdale, 12 noon; Looking north north-west, over pastures, drystone walls, an ash wood and a field barn.

A flock of fifty to a hundred gulls sits on a low-lying pasture by a bend in the headwaters of the River Aire. A few crows head off up the valley with more purpose than the drifting gulls.

Link; Town End Farm Shop

King of the Meadow

Biscuit and friendThis is when it takes so long to get through the Christmas cards, when I start getting tempted to draw cartoons in the neighbours’ cards.

Biscuit is a pony with attitude problems but I’m not sure who would come out on top if there was a contest to see who was King of the Meadow, Biscuit or that bruiser of the black and white cat. He’s the kind of cat you see trotting down the road with a vole in his mouth and he’s been known to bust through a neighbour’s cat-flap and push the resident cats away from their food to eat it himself.

A Stoat amongst the Fleabane

fleabaneFleabane, Pulicaria dysenterica, grows in the meadow areas by the ponds at Old Moor.

Its ragged-edged flowers are giving way to furry clocks of achenes.

An achene is a dry fruit. They might appear to be seeds but, like any fruit, they have a covering, it’s just that in this case the covering is dry, not fleshy, and it encloses the single seed so closely that it appears to be just a extra coating for the seed.

11.16 a.m.; a movement just beyond the fleabane. Quite a substantial animal – a rat?

stoatBeady Eye

No, its a darker, glossier mahogany brown. The stoat is so close that I can see the glint in its eye as it pauses and stares at me for a few seconds then turns back on its run through the grasses.

It’s a cliche but it has beady eyes. Deep brown with a sharp highlight. It was taking me in then coming to a decision.

It reminds me of a passage from Orwell’s Coming up for Air; ‘I was looking at the field, and the field was looking at me.’

And I’ve just come across this advice to photographers;

‘Be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence.’
Minor White

I’m still not quite sure who saw who first.

Time for my morning coffee break which happens to be just as the fruit scones come out of the oven. However they should come with a health warning; I break a filling as I’m eating it and have to head back home to arrange to see my dentist!

What bad luck. It reminds me that there’s an old country superstition that a stoat crossing your path will bring you bad luck but my mum told us there was a remedy for this.

At the place where you saw the stoat, leave a coin at the side of the path and whoever picks up the coin inherits the dose of bad luck. However I really wouldn’t want anyone else to break a filling today, I couldn’t be so cruel!

A Cure for Warts

breccia pebbleShe had a similar remedy for warts; pick up as many pebbles as you have warts and put those in a paper bag.

Leave the bag lying around where it might be see by a unsuspecting passer-by. Your warts will disappear when someone opens the bag. Unfortunately they will get your warts.

Not a nice thing to do. I must ask her who taught her these folk remedies. My guess would be her granny, Sarah Ann, born 1850. Sounds just like one of her tales.

After Biscuit

meadowThe meadow is already starting to look lank and overgrown, not just because it’s the time of year when tall grasses dry up and plants go to seed but also because its resident grazer, Biscuit, the temperamental Welsh pony, has moved on.

The new owners knew what they were taking on. One afternoon a few weeks ago we saw three girls, early teenage and younger, cautiously approaching him, feeding and stroking him then gradually introducing a harness.

BiscuitA few minutes later we heard a commotion; Biscuit was galloping up the field towards his stable, evidently upset about something. One of the older girls walked after him, the other stood watching. She seemed unconcerned about the youngest who was lying in the long grass, stunned. Eventually she got up with difficulty and limped off up the field, here jodhpurs hanging in long streamers, split on both sides the full length of her legs.

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Categorized as Meadow

Ledsham Vale

scabiousThe Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s Ledsham Vale is a long thin strip of meadow so as the rest of group make their way to the top end I can pause to draw field scabious.

We saw six or seven fresh-looking marbled whites.

Water Margins

I’ve been back at the RSPB’s Old Moor reserve, keeping my focus on flowers, which makes sense as it’s rather a quiet time for birds. I’ve added more drawings to some of last week’s pages.

Marsh orchid and greater spearwort.
Meadow vetchling and birdsfoot trefoil.
Purple loosestrife
Centaury and self-heal.
Reedmace and heath bedstraw.
Lady’s bedstraw and sedge warbler.
Meadowsweet

Seven in Heaven

seven balloon

Feeling light-headed, deflated and lost?
Yes, life is a gas, but it comes at a cost.

seven balloon

The party is over – seven years old!
Time for you to drift off through fields studded with gold.

Buttercup and Clover

buttercup and clover

Barbara has taken charge of the veg beds, giving me the chance to reach those parts of the garden that don’t normally get any attention.

I’ve trimmed right down around our little meadow as far as the bench in the corner, letting more light and air in. I need to get to the hedge, not only to trim it but also to keep the bindweed in check, which given the chance would spread into the garden too.

Being on such damp rich soil, the meadow is too lush, the grasses swamping out the wildflowers that I’d like to see thriving, such as birdsfoot trefoil and yellow rattle. There’s no sign of either yet this year.

Wedge of Meadow

meadow

yellow rattle
Yellow Rattle

IT’S EXPECTING a lot to wedge my wildflower meadow between the potato & onion bed and the bottom corner of the garden. I’ve still got to to dig out the chicory that has muscled out all the competition on the strip alongside the hedge, on the right of my photograph. I weeded this attractive but invasive wild flower out along the other two edges the triangle in the spring and resowed with a wildflower meadow seed mix which has sprouted so luxuriantly that I now need to trim it to create a perimeter path.

I’m pleased that in the central area the yellow rattle is flowering again this year. The theory is that it will keep the grasses in check because it is semi-parasitic on their roots but the grasses are thriving.

meadow
Looking back from the bench in the corner