Cod, Gadus morhua, washed up amongst the kelp from the strandline on Druridge Bay near Hauxley, Northumberland.
Cod
Category: Habitats
Hauxley
Another sketchbook page from our short break in Northumberland and it’s another view from a table in a cafe overlooking a lagoon in a restored landscape, this time at the Lookout Café at the Hauxley Wildlife Discovery Centre at the northern end of Druridge Bay.
Red admiral and speckled wood butterflies rested on willow and bramble in the afternoon sun in a sheltered corner at the foot of the wooded slope below the Wildlife Discovery Centre.
Link
Saltholme
We took a break at the RSPB Saltholme wetlands reserve on our way to, and back from, Northumberland last week. The panoramic windows of the first floor cafe look out over one of the lagoons, so we were watching dunlin, godwits and gadwall as we ate our lunch.
On the return journey the birding highlight was a pectoral sandpiper a migrant that was a long way off course as it headed south as it breeds in Arctic Canada.
To the south east Roseberry Topping makes a craggy a punctuation in the looming bulk of the North York Moors.
Roe Deer Rutting
On our way north along the M1 near Garforth we glimpsed two roe deer standing facing each other in a large stubble field. As we drove by they clashed antlers (10.20 a.m., 15 September).
Cutting Back
It got a bit neglected during the heatwave but now’s a good time to strim back the vegetation around the pond and trim the hawthorn hedges.
I had a near miss as I strimmed around the pond when I disturbed a large frog, but fortunately it hopped away unharmed. I’ve left a fringe of vegetation around the edges of the pond.
Selwicks Bay
Dipping back in my A-level field notebook and in those pre-digital days, I found that colour prints could be more useful than slides, as I could stick them in my notebook. Here I’ve indicated a fault in the wave-cut platform of Selwicks Bay, Flamborough Head.
Flints in Chalk
Flints are exposed in the chalk of the wave-cut platform south of the fault. Flints like these may have formed when the silica-rich skeletons of sponges and other creatures formed a gel on the seafloor which was drawn down into burrows in the chalk ooze – hence the shape of the nodules.
Buttress of Contorted Chalk
We looked at a buttress of contorted chalk south of the fault. The chalk contorted by the fault has been re-cemented by calcite-rich fluids circulating through the rock and depositing veins of calcite.
Strengthened by this cement the chalk is harder than that surrounding it and it has withstood erosion and formed a buttress.
Contorted Chalk with Calcite Veins
This vein is exposed on the wave-cut platform in front of the buttress.
Walled Garden
Our visit to the walled garden at Temple Newsam brought back memories of working on the Readers’ Digest Guide to Creative Gardening, published in 1984. Rue and goldenrod, two of the plants that I needed to draw, are still growing there and I might have drawn a stately-looking Thalictrum here too, but I didn’t spot that on our visit.
Ice Plant
Yesterday, 4.30 pm: The Ice Plant, formerly know as Sedum spectabile (will I ever remember that it’s now Hylotelephium?), sits in the last patch of sunlight on an early autumn afternoon as the house casts its shadow further down the back lawn. Its candy pink flower heads are constantly being visited by small bees and occasional bumblebee.
The small bees are gingery light brown with 5 or 66 dark horizontal stripes on the abdomen, so they look like our regular honey bees.
A buzzard circles over the wood and meadow, against a sky latticed with vapour trails alongside diaphanous swirls of cirrus.
I’m eyed warily by a bird in the hawthorn hedge. I get a brief impression of an eye stripe, so a dunnock, a wren or perhaps even an autumn migrant warbler dropping in.
The blue tit and a long-tailed tit seem to have decided that I’m harmless and they’re coming to the sunflower heart feeders just a few feet away from me.
A comfortable 20℃, 69℉, here in the shade with a hint of breeze to keep it fresh.
Screen Mirroring
Clip Studio Paint on the iPad: experimenting with adding colour.
I’m also trying screen mirroring so that if I’m working in, for example, Photoshop on my iMac, and I’ve got something intricate to do, like erasing background texture on a scan of a sketchbook page, I can switch over to working with the Apple Pencil on my iPad.
It would be possible to do a whole drawing this way but with Adobe Fresco, Clip Studio Paint and even a version of Photoshop on the iPad there’s no need to, I can draw directly.
I haven’t noticed any delay when I’m drawing using screen mirroring; the marks appear in real time.
Graphics Pad
For years I’ve used as Wacom Intuos 4 graphics pad for erasing or drawing in Photoshop on the iMac but with the latest Apple operating system, Monterey, Wacom no longer support that model. Working on the iPad should be more flexible, once I’ve learned the ins and outs of it, as I can see the iMac screen on the iPad. The graphics pad was blank, so I got used to drawing on the desktop and seeing the results appear on the iMac.
Trees are their Roots
Beech at Newmillerdam, drawn this morning with the constant accompaniment of cooing wood pigeons and the occasional clatter of a beech nut dropping from the still-green canopy.
Deeper in the Wood
Deep amongst the rhododendrons.