Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
I’m afraid it’s that time of year again when I have to briefly disturb our resident toad in the greenhouse. He or she isn’t too pleased about it but I make sure there’s a quiet corner under a plant tray available as I continue moving pots and pulling up spurge, chickweed and dandelion.
This spider with a plump abdomen is the most common beneath trays and plant pots. This is the male, the one with the ‘boxing glove’ pedipalps.
Resting on the wheelie bin by the hedge what looks like the Large Rose Sawfly, Arge pagana. The females have ‘saws’ to cut into plants when laying eggs. There’s a self-seeded rose growing up in the beech hedge right next to the bins.
Drawn in Procreate, using my homemade ‘worn nib’ brush for the line work.
Monday 30/Tuesday 31 July, 1973, RSPB Loch Garten: Monday was a good night for night watch. The Moon went down behind Craigowrie, Jupiter shone over Torr Hill and Mars came up red behind the eyrie. When it became really dark at midnight there were about 5 times as many stars out as I’d see on a good night at home . . . the Milky Way a streak above the eyrie running right through the W of Cassiopeia. The Pleiades, thousand of them, blue in binoculars came up left of tree.
The dramatic dawn, blinding bright when the sun got up behind the eyrie and shone directly into the hide.
The end of the garden has become a bit of a grassroot jungle and as I pulled bindweed out from around the compost heap I disturbed this small grasshopper.
Perhaps a stripe-winged grasshopper or common green?
We don’t often spot grasshoppers in the garden. This might be our first record.
Thursday 9th August 1973, from my Osprey Camp, Loch Garten, sketchbook: What a wind; swaying the forest pines, bending over the birches on the moor, breaking up the bank of cloud coming up the valley. There was white water on the gullery and grey breakers on Garten when I got round. I walked on shore getting sprayed.
‘They’ll moulder away and be like other loam.’ said Edwin Muir in his poem ‘The Horses’. This lorry was mouldering away on Torr Hill.
As part of my attempt to get to know my way around my digital camera I’m making a point of taking it with me whenever I can, even on a trip to Junction 32 shopping centre at Castleford this morning. This is the view from our table at Bakers and Baristas.
Just to get started I took a photograph of the gabion wall by the car park.
If I can get relaxed about using my camera in public I’ll move on to including people in my photographs.
A mallard – possibly a youngster as it seems to be in the process of growing secondary wing feathers for the first time – standing at the cascading outlet of Newmillerdam lake this morning.
Meanwhile this adult female and her mate were paddling alongside the Boathouse Cafe.
Today’s module in Ben Hawkins’ Complete Beginner’s Photography Course explores movement, so he suggests techniques to freeze or alternatively blur the action of speeding vehicles or to capture traffic trails at night but I’ve headed for Coxley Beck to try some long exposures of flowing water.
For these one- to two-second exposures a tripod was essential and, as with the macro flower shots yesterday, using an app on my iPhone to trigger the camera and set the focus point made things a lot easier than squinting through the viewfinder. It also cut out any chance of camera shake.
More insects from Dalby Forest, including the soldier beetle, Rhagonycha fulva, also known as ‘the bloodsucker’ because of its colour. It’s harmless, but we aren’t far from Whitby, where Dracula came ashore, so who knows?
Batman Hoverfly, Myathropa florea, on hogweed in a clearing below Staindale Lake, Dalby Forest, North Yorks Moors. It is supposed to have a Batman logo-shaped marked on the rear of the thorax, but individuals can be variable.
The larvae of this hoverfly are ‘rat-tailed maggots’ living in wet hollows in woodland, although they’ll make use of buckets and plastic containers.
