Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Upper lake, Nostell Priory: The seed capsules of bladdernut contain hard seeds that have been used as beads. Bladdernut, Staphylea pinnata, is a deciduous shrub or small tree, native to central and southern Europe and Turkey. It was introduced to Britain in the 16th century.
Catmint and geraniums are attracting bumble bees in the walled garden at Nostell Priory.
9.20 a.m., Market Place, Ossett, 52°F, 13°C: A town pigeon perches on the antenna on the town hall roof then flies off in a stiff winged display flight. A stubble of rush-like spikes prevents these feral pigeons, descendants of the rock dove, from using sills, mouldings and cupolas as cliff ledges but the strings of Christmas lights still festooned across the facade provide an alternative perch. One has found a niche on a jutting corner.
It’s not much more than a year since the building was given a major restoration but already two elders have sprouted and are blossoming in crevices in the stonework.
A black-headed gulls flies over and a swift soars around hawking for insects.
The fresh greens of spring are now over and trees have filled out with lush deep green foliage. Already I have to lean over as I pass the car in the drive because the rowan has put out so many soft ferny sprays of leaf.
Strings of yellow keys – pairs of ‘helicopter’ seeds – are hanging from the sycamores.
A song thrush is taking food to a nest hidden in the beech hedge at the front of the house. A month or so ago, I watched them taking nesting material into the leylandii hedge next door but when the beech came into a leaf a week or two later they started nest-building there instead.
During the rain garden snails have climbed onto our front door. I relocate eight of them by tossing them across the garden into the corner by the beech hedge.
One of the favourite hang outs for snails and for large brown slugs is under the wheelie bins. Once a week when we put the bins out, they have to find alternative cover but we usually put out the bins in the evening, giving them the cool of the night to slither for safety.
The RHS recommended ‘good for pollinators’ collection of bulbs is living up to its name; the allium flowers are attracting small bumblebees even in the rain. It helps that the flowers hang downwards.
The chives in the herb bed are covered in purple pom-poms of flower and these are attracting red-tailed bumble bees.
Ants are excavating beneath the paving slabs on the drive and the patio. Charles Darwin made observations to calculate how long it would take earthworms, leaving worm casts on his lawn, to bury a stone that he had left there. The ants are gradually undermining the paving stones and probably some day we’re going to have to relay them.
12.28 p.m.: The male great spotted woodpecker arrives but he’s out of luck: five crows have just been down to the feeding station and they’ve knocked the fat ball feeder off the post.
A young siskin, so streaky that I wondered if it was a redpoll, joins the adult males on the niger feeder. In their bright, neat plumage the males look as if they’re in uniform and ready to be assertive, in contrast the juvenile fades into the background and appears innocuous and inoffensive. The wing stripes and a hint of green in the tail give a hint of the neater adult plumage to come.
2.20 – 4 p.m.: I finish the pen drawing and start adding watercolour to my drawing of the little waterfall where Oughtershaw Beck crosses and exposure of limestone. I start with the lightest colour which is the pale ochre grey of the limestone then I add the brighter yellow green of the moss before going on to the water, the face of the rock that is in the shade and the darker green patches of moss.
I try to give some impression of the solidity of the rock but realise that if I take things too far I will lose the sparkle of the water so on my third top left to bottom right progress across the drawing with my series of watercolour washes, I decide that is enough and anyway it’s time to go back to Nethergill for a pot of tea and some homemade flapjack. Wish I had more time for this kind of drawing!
The wood avens that I spotted the other day in the turf on the river bank at my feet as I sat in this same spot appears to have been washed away but birdsfoot trefoil is still in flower and there are leaves of lady’s mantle, also plantain and at least one species of sedge.
The late afternoon thunderstorm isn’t as heavy as those we’ve had on previous days so we take a walk across the moor to the next farm up the valley on a calm pearly evening. The buzzard sits calling on the same post that it was on the other day.
It’s impossible to do this walk without seeing several meadow pipits sitting on fence posts or on the power lines but it’s worth checking out every bird on a post. One of them turns out to be a male reed bunting, a new bird for our Nethergill list. I don’t remember seeing it in previous years.
The curlews are calling over the buttercup meadows by the beck. A pied wagtail perches on the power line at Swarthghyll. Northern marsh orchids are in fresh flower on the tree-lined track to the farm. There’s a reminder of more everyday scenes: wood pigeon and mallard in the field by the bird hide.
The hummocky ground layer of Bilberry Wood is carpeted, as its name suggests, with bilberry which is dripping with globular pink flowers, a few of which are beginning to set berries. It has flourished in the years since the wood was fenced off to prevent sheep grazing here.
Recently red squirrels have moved into the wood. They have been caught on camera attracted to feeding boxes (see link below).
Bumble bees are busy in the wood but on the strips of acid grassland around it small heath butterflies are the most conspicuous insects, flitting about over damp sedgey ground pockmarked with the hoof-prints of sheep and cattle. Two green-veined whites have paired up and come to rest among the grasses, giving us a chance to take some close-up macro shots.
In a calm section of Oughtershaw beck, large red damselflies, Pyrrhosoma nymphula, are laying their eggs, perching on a leaf of pondweed, Potamogeton.
Red squirrels at a nut feeder in Bilberry Wood, Nethergill.
Nethergill Farm, 1.10 p.m.: Cumulus clouds are towering over Langstrothdale and the thunderstorms that the forecast suggested were a possibility would now be welcome as even here in the shade of the old barn the temperature is climbing into the high seventies Fahrenheit, 25 C.
A cuckoo is calling on the far side of the valley. Meadow pipits are the birds we see most often on the road across the moor to Hawes, so it will have plenty of nesting pairs in its territory.
The farm’s resident blackbird sings from the ash tree, which is covered in sprays of blossom, which is now going over, and freshly sprouted bright green fronds of leaves.
Goldfinches chatter excitedly in its canopy. A gentle breeze sighs as it passes across the valley ahead of the gathering cloud but does nothing to freshen the atmosphere.
A pheasant explodes in a brief grockle of indignation, flies murmur, a cockerel crows: a strangulated wail. The hens here at Nethergill farm ‘are still learning’ so Fiona added an extra egg to the small but deep yellow yoked half dozen that she gave us in our welcome pack for our self-catering apartment, the Hay Mew. Also included, slices of her homemade flapjack which has been enticing Dales Way walkers to take a break here for the last five years.
2.45 p.m., Bilberry Wood, Langstrothdale: We could hear a buzzard mewing but couldn’t spot one circling or perching in the pines on the far side of the beck; it was on the moorland edge on the slope beyond, perching on a fence-post. It was still there and still calling when we walked back, half an hour later.
3 p.m.: Starlings nest beneath the roof tiles at Swarthghyll Farm, Langstrothdale. House martin and swallow fly in at the barn window below.
3.20 p.m.: A green-veined white is sunning itself on a bank by the track across the moor, after a brief chase with a rival. It has fine dark veins on its upper wings but lacks the spots and borders that you see on many white butterflies (including most green-veined whites). A brief glimpse of the veins of its underwing helps confirm that it really is a green-veined.
5 p.m. riverside hide, Nethergill Farm: A pied wagtail feeds amongst the rocks on the beck, which is running low. It flies vertically to snap an insect in mid-air, then switches its attention to the beck-side pasture, darting to pick up insects from the clumps of rushes.
Every time we drive over the cattle grid, a sandpiper pipes at us in obvious annoyance and arcs around in an ostentatiously level flight, flashing its wing-stripes. It’s on sentry duty again this afternoon as we walk down the track. It perches on a fence post to pipe at us until we leave its marshy patch but a little further along a pair of sandpipers fly up from the rushes alongside Oughtershaw Beck.
We find a spot downstream where we can sit at the beck-side, undisturbed by waders. The beck, which is rather low at present, plunges over a bed of limestone. The blocks and cracks remind me of the clints and grykes of the limestone pavement at Malham Cove.
When I’m drawing a subject like this which is almost abstract with its interlocked, repetitive shapes, I keep finding distinctive features to act as landmarks as I map out the adjacent sections of the formation, briefly giving them names so that I can plot a point as “level with ‘The Brow'” or “directly below ‘The Triangle'”.
I’m wishing that I had a length of string so that I could strap my spiral bound sketchbook around my neck. I really wouldn’t like it to drop in the beck.
As I look down I notice water avens growing from the turf that projects out over the water. Here, probably somewhat beyond easy reach for browsing sheep, there are probably half a dozen species within a square foot, including lady’s mantle, birdsfoot trefoil, plantain and a sedge.
6 p.m.: perching on a tree guard by the edge of the birch wood alongside Oughtershaw Beck, a male redstart sits preening. It occasionally darts up for insects.
Once again siskins outnumber other birds at the feeders. A more unusual visitor is a redpoll. It isn’t much bigger than the siskins and is considerably smaller than the occasional goldfinches and chaffinches which fly in to feed.
There’s a single tawny owl chick sitting in the morning sun perching on the lower section of the barn door. The owls have nested under the roof beam in the barn, stuffing sticks into the end of a piece of sacking that had been draped beneath.
The resident blackbird scolds it. This is the farmyard’s resident blackbird that, Fiona tells us, has been angry ever since it arrived.
There’s an arch of hawthorn blossom over the path at the entrance to Stoneycliffe Wood Yorkshire Wildlife Trust reserve. Silver birch and oak are in fresh foliage ; evening sunlight dapples the path.
It’s been cool all day then at four the sun came out and it’s turned into a glorious summer evening.
As we walk down into the wood there’s a waft of wild garlic ; some of the leaves are starting to turn yellow and shrivel but some plants are still in flower.
Another path side plant, wood avens, also known as Herb Bennet, grows alongside. It’s currently in yellow flower but will later have clusters of hooked seeds which can hitch a ride on a passing dog to be transported along the network of paths through the woods.
There’s a lot of Herb Robert too: it’s hooked cranesbill seeds are transported in a similar way. The limestone chippings used in the path provide it with a suitable habitat as it’s a plant that tends to avoid acid soils.
There are a few patches of yellow archangel at the top end of the wood, a plant that is taken as an indicator of ancient woodland.
Song thrushes are calling in alarm or more probably in a dispute over territory.
Quarter of a million seabirds nest at Bempton Cliffs RSPB reserve. Each species has a preference for a particular niche on the cliff.
The ledges are bedding planes in the chalk. Vertical joints break the cliff face up into blocky units. In my photograph (above) the block that the herring gull is nesting on looks as if it’s well on its way to becoming detached from the cliff face.
There’s an eye-wateringly stiff breeze this morning so this is a challenging place to try out my new telephoto lens. Although I’ve mounted the camera on a monopod/walking pole it’s still getting buffeted around so I leave the image stabilisation switched on.
Puffins are the stars of the show at the reserve but one of the wardens is having difficulty pointing them out as they keep flying off.
I get a distant view of a pair checking out a crevice at the top of the cliff. At Bempton puffins nest in crevices rather than in rabbit burrows.
Also near the top of the cliff, this razorbill’s mate looks as if it too is considering nesting in a crevice but you’re more likely to see them nesting on the smaller upper ledges.
In an adaptation to nesting on cliff ledges, the razorbill’s egg is tapered at one end so that, if knocked, it will roll in a tight circle. The chicks are born with an innate fear of heights, so they don’t stray too near the edge.
At Bempton the guillemots tend lower down the cliff, sometimes getting together in nesting colonies on the larger ledges.
Kittiwakes can make use of the smallest ledges, building up a nest with seaweed and grass.
I just miss the perfect photo opportunity: six or seven gannets have landed on the cliff top to gather beak-fulls of grass; they’re just yards away from a group of birdwatchers but by the time I’ve set up my camera they’ve all flown off again.
Link: RSPB Bempton Cliffs reserve.