Happy birthday to Roger, who doesn’t need satnav to find his way around the Dales.
Sheepdog Satnav
Category: Habitats
Brown-lipped Snail
6th May: I picked up a dried up sycamore leaf from a shady corner of John’s garden and found this brown-lipped snail, Cepaea nemoralis, hidden beneath attached to the leaf. We had a dry April so the snail might have settled down to a period of inactivity known a aestivation.
Spiderlings
Two little clusters of spiderlings, hanging low down by our front door.
When I went in close with my Olympus Tough, I must have caught some of the surrounding strands of silk because the spiderlings started to disperse. They soon clustered together again.
Buttercups
Meadow buttercup, creeping buttercup and pendulous sedge in our back garden (plus one stray nettle leaf).
Howgate Wonder
We’re almost at the end of the apple blossom and the embryo fruits are beginning to form. I’ll need to thin out the fruits to two per cluster and I think most growers would then recommend just keeping the best of those as they develop. If I leave five in each cluster the tree will shed several as they start to grow.
Small Sketchbook
Recent sketches from my pocket sketchbook, colour mostly added later. Sometimes I’ll take a photograph for colour reference but with these I’ve added the colour as I remember it.
Ducks and Doves
A drake mallard stood resting by the duck pond in Thornes Park this morning. This was the only bird that didn’t move much during the whole time that I was there but I still found it difficult to draw get the correct proportion of head to body. With each drawing I started with the head but by the time I’d drawn the body I’d find myself coming back to redraw the head.
I couldn’t resist adding colour, which immediately made my sketches more mallard-like.
I drew birds in our back garden in the afternoon and, as with the mallard, added colour to each one as I went along.
The stock dove was an unusual visitor, smaller than the wood pigeon but quite capable of chasing it off, reaching out as if threatening to peck it. By the time they’d got down to the edge of the pond the wood pigeon gave up and flew away, leaving the stock dove to return to foraging beneath the bird feeders.
Heuchera
A group of these plants were growing on the riverbank and on a rubbly bank at the side of the riverside path behind industrial units. It looks like a relative of water avens but doesn’t have the drooping flowerheads of that species. Most of the flowers were yellowish green but some plants had flowers midway down the stem with magenta petals. A garden escape?
Next day we spotted this plant amongst the ferns at Brodsworth Hall and Gardens. It’s a Heuchera, a member of the saxifrage family from North America, so definitely a garden escape.
Washington Wildfowl Trust
Taking a break on our return from Northumberland at Washington Wildfowl and Wetland Trust.
Blackthorn Blossom
We’re on a north-facing slope, so the blackthorn blossom appears late and is still hanging on.
There are clusters of cream flowers on the bay, we haven’t noticed them in previous years. Bay is a member of the Lauraceae, the laurel family.