Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
As part of my attempt to get to know my way around my digital camera I’m making a point of taking it with me whenever I can, even on a trip to Junction 32 shopping centre at Castleford this morning. This is the view from our table at Bakers and Baristas.
Just to get started I took a photograph of the gabion wall by the car park.
If I can get relaxed about using my camera in public I’ll move on to including people in my photographs.
A mallard – possibly a youngster as it seems to be in the process of growing secondary wing feathers for the first time – standing at the cascading outlet of Newmillerdam lake this morning.
Meanwhile this adult female and her mate were paddling alongside the Boathouse Cafe.
Today’s module in Ben Hawkins’ Complete Beginner’s Photography Course explores movement, so he suggests techniques to freeze or alternatively blur the action of speeding vehicles or to capture traffic trails at night but I’ve headed for Coxley Beck to try some long exposures of flowing water.
For these one- to two-second exposures a tripod was essential and, as with the macro flower shots yesterday, using an app on my iPhone to trigger the camera and set the focus point made things a lot easier than squinting through the viewfinder. It also cut out any chance of camera shake.
More insects from Dalby Forest, including the soldier beetle, Rhagonycha fulva, also known as ‘the bloodsucker’ because of its colour. It’s harmless, but we aren’t far from Whitby, where Dracula came ashore, so who knows?
Batman Hoverfly, Myathropa florea, on hogweed in a clearing below Staindale Lake, Dalby Forest, North Yorks Moors. It is supposed to have a Batman logo-shaped marked on the rear of the thorax, but individuals can be variable.
The larvae of this hoverfly are ‘rat-tailed maggots’ living in wet hollows in woodland, although they’ll make use of buckets and plastic containers.
Coming home from Leeds on the 116. Colour added later.
Wearing wellies, I painted these hawthorns on a bend of Coxley Beck in April 1996. They were overhanging the deeper outside bank and since then the beck has undercut them and they ended up in the stream.
Jenny, natural history illustrator, drawing by our pond. She recently completed a commission to illustrate an information board about the wildlife at a pond on a nature reserve in West Sussex.
She started on John Norris Wood’s natural history illustration course at the Royal College of Art a year after I left, in 1976 and graduated in 1979, focussing on the Chelsea Physic Garden, it’s history and plants.
Mosey Downgate, RSPB Bempton Cliffs, 12.30 pm, Thursday 6 July, 69℉ 24℃: Most of the kittiwake chicks now have conspicuous black stripes along their forewings, although there are some downy chicks still around. One birdwatcher tells me that he was here a month ago and he estimates there are now three times as many nesting.
The warden suggests that this impression might be because a month ago many of the pairs were nest building and spending more time away from the cliffs. Kittiwake numbers are stable at Bempton but nationally the bird is in decline, so the wardens are keeping a close watch on numbers.
Two young wood pigeons looking relaxed in our golden hornet crab apple.