Black-headed gull, moorhen, mallard and Canada goose at Thornes Park duck pond this morning.
Canada Goose
Category: Habitats
Oak Leaves
Oak, white deadnettle and so far unidentified leaf (cherry?) by the canal near the Navigation Inn yesterday.
Grebe, Gull and Heron
After recent heavy rain Newmillerdam is cloudy and khaki. A great-crested grebe pops up just yards from my table at the water’s edge at the Boathouse Cafe with a small silvery fish in its bill.
Down by the outlet a heron is watching, waiting and stalking its prey, so intent on fishing that it allows me to rest my iPhone on the railings just 10 yards away from it to take this photograph.
Curlews and Tree Sparrows
Curlews and tree sparrows at the Northumberland Wildlife Trust’s Hauxley nature reserve last week.
And some grazing teal from our return journey via RSPB Saltholme reserve.
Rainshadow
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 a draft excluder, would go well with any chicken-themed interior design scheme)
Saltholme Pools
On Wednesday morning the farmer was moving the cattle that graze the marshes at RSPB Saltholme from Paddy’s Pool over to the Saltholme Pools.
Cormorants, Crows and Coffee
Boathouse Cafe, Newmillerdam, 11.20am, hazy sky alto-stratus, a few small spots of drizzle in a coolish breeze
A gulls gets the better of a crow, which stops to preen on the ridge tiles of the boathouse roof.
A juvenile cormorant – brown with a light breast – splashes its wings as it makes its way down the lake in what I presume is some kind of preening routine. It then takes off, skimming low over the water to join seven adult cormorants on their favourite resting place, the boughs of a half-submerged fallen tree.
Mugged for a Mussel
The waters of Newmillerdam were rippling tranquilly in the autumnal morning light yesterday, so hypnotically that one toddler was standing transfixed.
‘He’s fascinated by the water,’ his mother explained to Barbara. The child, oriental and completely bald, like a young version of the Dalai Lama, who is traditionally chosen by senior monks who meditate at Lhamo La-Tso, an oracle lake in central Tibet.
Not so tranquil were the black-headed gulls mugging the tufted ducks to steal the freshwater mussels they were diving for. At first I saw a gull touch down on a duck’s back, swooping in from behind, but the duck immediately dived out of reach. Next two gulls were diving on a pair of tufted ducks which had just surface and I saw that one gulls managed to grab an acorn-sized object which was probably a small freshwater mussel.
Grandma’s Swan Prints
Back to a bit of tranquility: I spotted these Victorian chromolithographs at the Drift Cafe at Cresswell, Druridge Bay. They’re so like the pair that my Grandma Bell had hanging in her cottage, and later bungalow, at Sutton-cum-Lound that I feel they must be from the same edition. When grandma died in the late 1970s my cousin Janet took them, and grandma’s dark-wood dresser to her flat in Poplar, East London. It was strange to see them in their new surroundings.
The canal below Hartley Bank, with the birches coming into their autumn colours reminded me of the tranquil atmosphere of grandma’s pictures.
Sea Mayweed
I’d normally assume that this was scentless mayweed but as it was growing at the top of the sandy beach at the foot of the sea wall at North Beach, Bridlington, I’m going for its near-identical relative, sea mayweed, Tripleurospermum maritimum.
Turnstones
As always, at Bridlington last week, I was amazed how tolerant turnstones are of people and dogs walking by just a few yards away.
New Rolltop
Bridlington may be ‘West Riding by the Sea’, the most traditionally familiar of Yorkshire’s seaside resorts, but with Flamborough Head jutting out at the end of North Bay, you’re soon on a wilder-looking stretch of coast. I was sorry to hear that the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust had reluctantly decided to close their Living Seas Centre at South Landing to all except booked-in parties but we’re glad that RSPB Bempton is so popular.
Maple
Maple keys, botanically samaras, and leaves. Each winged seed was connected to the stem by a thin tube. You can see remnants of these tubes in my drawing, one on the seed end of the maple key on the right and the stub of one on the nearest stem.