Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
The male couldn’t quite get past the female pheasant as they came down the garden path this morning.
He strikes out to treat her to his magnificent display as he struts across the frozen pond.
But as soon as he steps onto the ice he sinks into the icy water in a gap at the edge.
He recovers as best he can and careers onwards over the ice.
The femle seems inimpressed as she ambles across the frosted lawn towards the bird feeders.
Amongst the regular birds at the feeders late this afternoon, a female blackcap – with a reddish rather than a black cap like the male – which fended off the sparrows and blue tits from the sunflower hearts feeder but deferred to the robin.
It returned later and was the last bird at the feeders. By then the light had faded so much that we needed binoculars to pick out the colours.
Recent winds had resulted in the water level in the pond dropping. Yesterday’s rain topped it up to its fullest, overflowing level and last night’s frost froze it over.
Smithy Brook has spilt over onto the pastures a the lower end of Hostingley Lane by the Go Outdoors store. A dabchick divves amongst the beck-side trees.
At the far end of Low Lane, a male blackbird with white head and a small patch of white on the shoulder.
Yesterday morning: a buzzard on a fence post.
A bit of rivalry amongst ponies in a muddy pasture on Sandy Lane.
My favourite gardening gloves are worn through at the fingers, so a good subject for another textures drawing for my Procreate Dreams course.
The various texture brushes will have their uses but I like to be in control so my favourite way of creating a texture is to hand draw it, in this case with Procreate’s Dry Ink brush.
My 1981 Wakefield Market acrylic on canvas painting makes a rare appearance at Wednesday’s Wakefield ArtWalk at the Gissing House, Thompson’s Yard, at the top of Westgate, along with some of the sketches I made on location.
I’d taken a new A5 hardback sketchbook and was drawing in fountain pen so I hoped that no-one would notice me scribbling away as I sat on the low wall in front of the Old Queen Elizabeth Gallery and started on the first page sketching the backs of the fruit and veg stalls. No such luck.
“Penny for the Guy, Mister?”
Grudgingly I agreed to make a small contribution to their firework fund on condition that they’d keep still for a few minutes while I drew them. The whole point of my market sketches was to get practice drawing a variety of figures.
I’m sure that poor old Guy didn’t last long but I wonder what creative entrepreneurs Kelly, Banger and Mizzy are up to now. Would be great to meet up with them again at the ArtWalk.
I guess that they might be about 50 years old by now.
Yesterday’s snow lingering on at the lower end of Coxley Valley.
Seedheads of common knapweed, Centaurea nigra, from my patch of wildflower meadow at the end of the garden.
A couple of these striking-looking flies – black with sunburst spots on the wing bases – were basking around the ivy flowers in the south-facing shelter of the walled garden at RSPB Saltholme.
The female Noon Fly, or Noonday Fly, Mesembrina meridiana, lays a single egg on horse or cow dung. The larva is a predator, feeding on other fly larvae in the dung.
Still around at the beginning of November, two male common darter dragonflies, Sympetrum striolatum, were resting on a fence by the play area at RSPB Saltholme.
The Lookout Cafe at the Northumberland Wildlife Trust Hauxley Nature Reserve is an ideal place to sketch.
At the opposite corner of the reserve, on the lagoon near the outlet to Druridge Bay, a female gadwall is dabbling amongst a raft of washed-up kelp.
The spindle has fuchsia-red fruits which remind me of miniature pumpkins. It looks as if most of the orange berries of sea buckthorn have already been eaten, perhaps by redwings and fieldfares, but there are a few clumps left close to the path. We had a glimpse of what I thought was a flock of redwings going over, if so, these are the first that we’ve seen this year.
