Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
11.15 am: On a cool, drizzly morning, two mistle thrushes are checking out the well-trodden grass of the play area at Pontefract Castle. One of them appears to have a sash of darker feathers across its speckled breast, perhaps a result of hopping through wet grass. On both birds there’s a white spot on the wing.
It’s that time of year when blue tits and sparrows fight it out for who gets to nest in our various nest boxes. Last year the blue tits raised a brood in the sparrow terrace at the back of our house but after a lively dispute between a pair of sparrows and a pair of blue tits over the blue tit box in the rowan tree in the front garden, the box ended up with no occupants during the breeding season.
History is repeating itself with the blue tits franticly trying to repel the sparrows at 8.30 this morning but the sparrows managed to force their way to the box and, as it turned out, despite the narrow dimensions of the brass ring around the entrance hole, they were able to squeeze in.
At the moment it’s sparrows who are taking most interest in the three-nest hole sparrow terrace but it’s early days and the blue tits could easily be the ones who eventually take possession.
We helped this toad across the towpath on the narrow strip of land between the canal and the river. It was heading in the direction of a marshy field, the Wyke, on a meander of the River Calder. Also crossing the towpath, a larger female toad with a small male clinging tightly to her back.
We accompanied Barbara’s brother John in a wheelchair on a circuit of the Hospice grounds this morning.
Trees at the Hospice today and the Showcase Cinema at Birstall yesterday.
Another dip into my student sketchbook from 50 years ago and I was visiting Christopher and Doreen Reynolds in Broadstairs. I’d written about Christopher and his approach to natural history illustration and writing as a closing section in my thesis at Leeds College of Art but this was the first time I’d met him.
It was so useful to go beachcombing ‘with someone who could not only say what the shells and washed up animals and plants were but could also, if prompted, come up with some interesting observation about it.’
He was writing and illustrating his children’s non-fiction book Creatures of the Bay at that time.
Snow, rapidly melting, at the hospice this morning.
Flowering cherry (or some other kind of Prunus?) at the hospice this morning.
Blackbirds are singing, wood pigeons occasionally perch in the branches but the most remarkable bird was a red kite, seen from the car park.
In a flagstone just outside John’s patio windows, these dendritic crystals look like the fossil of a tree but they’re actually crystals – perhaps of manganese as they’re black – that have grow across the layers of this flagstone, in a similar from to the ice crystals in a snowflake.
The fast food at the Falafel Street Kitchen was a tad too fast for me and this was as far as I was able to get in sketching the customers.
Luckily the pace at the Nats’ AGM was a little more sedate. Even so, these days we get through the business side of the evening in a little over fifteen minutes.
Like a scene from Peter Rabbit, a woman walks up the garden path to Hilary’s cafe with a large bunch of fresh carrots, holding them by the lush ferny foliage of the carrot tops.
She’s soon back down the shed, returning again with three Petanque boule-size beetroots, again with fresh-looking foliage.
“I only came here for a cup of coffee!” she explains.