Category: Habitats

Foraging Party

long-tailed tit11.30 a.m., Lower Lake, Nostell Priory Park: As we walk into the wood behind the house at Nostell Priory, a mixed party of woodland birds is making its way through the trees ahead of us.

Each bird has its own approach to feeding, exploiting a different niche to the other birds in the party:

  • the blue tit hangs upside down to peck at an opened-up capsule hanging from the end of a slender twig on the beech tree. I suspect that it’s more interested in any invertebrates that might be sheltering in the crevices than it is in the beech nut itself
  • the coal tit closely inspects the branches of a holly
  • long-tailed tits flit about amongst the branches
  • a robin flies onto one of the lower branches of a holly then flies down to perch on a log. It’s the only bird in the group that gives the impression that it might be as much concerned with keeping an eye on its territory as it is on feeding
  • the great tit keeps flying down to ground level to probe amongst the leaf litter
  • a wren hops under the massive logs of a felled sweet chestnut, a niche that none of the other birds can explore
  • a magpie follows the foraging group along. If there’s anything going on in its territory, a magpie will always want a piece of the action

Later we add another two birds to our woodland list for this morning: a dunnock flies out from beneath a conifer and, as another feeding party makes its way through trees and shrubs at the entrance to the Menagerie, a goldcrest flies in front of us to investigate the branches of a holly.

We puzzle over a bird call in the trees by the chalets in Top Wood. To me it sounds like something the size of a woodpecker, but it isn’t the mad laughing ‘yaffle’ call of the green woodpecker. We check it out with a search on the RSPB website; it’s a nuthatch. It’s got a loud call for such a small bird, one that can be difficult to spot as it makes its way along the trunk and branches of trees in the wood.

A Good Year for Cygnets

On the Lower Lake, amongst the wigeon, mallards, moorhens and tufted ducks, there are six female goosanders. We don’t see any males.

It’s been a good year for mute swans: the pair on the Lower Lake have three cygnets, the pair on the Middle Lake have four. Last year the Nostell swans weren’t so successful, with only two cygnets successfully reared.

A Hawthorn by the Beck

hawthorn3.25 p.m., 45°F, 7°C: This ivy-covered hawthorn has rotted through near its base and collapsed across a bend in Coxley Beck. When I painted this hawthorn twenty years ago, the bank on the outside bend had already been undercut.

brambleThe ivy will survive by putting out adventitious roots where the upper branches of the thorn have come to rest on the opposite bank.

Straggly stems of bramble hang over the water. One has climbed up a slender elder bush and dangles midstream, touching the surface of the water.

leavescrack willowGold, ochre, russet and yellow-green leaves of alder and crack willow are strewn along the edge of the stream. Tall shuttlecocks of fern help give a jungly look to the tangled stream-side vegetation. Himalayan balsam has been withered by frost but its tall fleshy canes are still hanging on to a few green leaves.

Signal Crayfish

beckClearing away vegetation from the side of this stretch of Coxley Beck, a neighbour came across what I guess must be a signal crayfish, a North American species which has become established in this country and which is ousting our native white-clawed species.

My neighbour described a living specimen he came across as ‘large’ and brown. He then turned over some vegetation and found a dead individual, which was upside down, revealing red markings on the underside of its claws.

This is bad news for any white-clawed crayfish that might have been present in the beck. A friend who remembers the beck as it was before any of the houses were built on the beck side of the road told me that there were crayfish there, but this would be about fifty years ago.

But perhaps there is some potentially good news as signal crayfish are eaten by otters. One of the members of our local natural history society, Wakefield Naturlists’, Francis Hickenbottom, showed me a photograph of an otter pellet he’d come across at a nature reserve by the River Aire. The pellet included a number of those distinctive red claws.

Shepherd’s Purse

shepherd's purseShepherd’s purse, like other members of the cress family, has four-petalled flowers but it’s easier to identify its heart-shaped seed pods which are the shape of the sporran-like purse worn by medieval shepherds.

This plant has so far survived our autumn weeding of the veg beds, hanging on in there in the last square metre of the L-shaped bed next to our little meadow area, growing alongside spurge, bush vetch, forget-me-not and creeping buttercup and a few rosettes of sow-thistle and foxglove.

Ivy Flowers

ivy flowers2.30 p.m., overcast, 58°F, 14°C: Warps are methodically working the pale yellowish green flowers of the ivy. These must rank as the dowdiest of flowers but the sweetish heady scent has also attracted a few bluebottles which have a more skittish approach to imbibing this autumnal supply of nectar.small fly One sunny morning last week, hoverflies and drone flies were also joining in this end of season feast.

A Strand of Woodland

clouds

Towering cumulonimbus over Smithy Brook valley, white against a blue sky in the morning sun.

Until a few years ago there were twin filling stations at the traffic lights at Shaw Cross but now one of them has closed and it’s surprising how soon the forecourt has reverted to a woodland glade.

Even the bund across its former entrance has already been colonised by sycamore saplings and buddleia bushes, in contrast to the still fresh-looking road markings on the stub of the entrance drive.

 

 

Perennial Cornflower

cornflower10.25 a.m., cumulo stratus 80%, 59°F, 15°C, back garden.

The perennial cornflower was originally a plant I introduced from my mum’s large, leafy and well-stocked garden. It has settled in well, scattering its seeds along our border. I’m sure that we never planted it at this end, by the corner of the patio next to the bird bath. There’s often a blackbird or sometimes a sparrow sitting on the edge of the patio here and I guess that’s how it found it’s way here, in a bird dropping. It also spreads via creeping rhizome.

cornflowerAs its scientific name, Centaurea montana, suggests, it’s a plant of subalpine meadows and open woodland in Europe, ranging from the Ardennes the Pyrenees and in the east as far as the Balkans.

calendulaWe’ve had more colour in the border this autumn than we had in the summer. The pot marigold, Calendula, which we planted a year or two ago at this end of the border has spread across the back garden, popping up in the veg beds and in the greenhouse.

 

crow

As it flies – ‘as the crow flies’, in a straight line – this carrion crow makes a call that I describe as ‘Tchuik! Tuikk! Twik!’ in my sketch: not the harsh, croaking ‘Caw! Caw! Caw! Caw!’ that I associate with crows. The Handbook of British Birds describes this call as ‘a higher-pitched, complaining “keerk, keerk, keerk”.

 I hear the regular ‘caw’ half an hour later after a commotion with the local magpies at the edge of the wood, which have been making their chattering rattling calls in the tall ash trees.

The sparrows chirping in the hedge are a more homely soundtrack for my drawing. It’s feels like a treat to be out of doors drawing from nature again.

Knopper Galls

Knopper galls

Hundreds of knopper galls are scattered beneath the oaks in Nostell Park. On some you can see the way that the acorn has been transformed into the home and the food source for the larva of the gall wasp Andricus quercuscalis. The acorns have stalks, botanically penduncles, so these are the acorns of the common or pendunculate oak, Quercus robur.

It’s the asexual generation of this gall wasp that produces the knopper gall; the alternate sexual generation produces tiny galls on the male catkins of the Turkey oak, Quercus cerris. Turkey oak acorns have ‘mossy’ cups, that remind me of the furry Russian hat that Ivan the Terrible might have worn. There are several Turkey oaks at Nostell.

Bracket fungus

This species of bracket fungus is sprouting on deciduous stumps in the woods around the lakes.

Rabbit Mesh

Lettuce
Additional security around the lettuce bed.

The head gardener is adding wire mesh to the newly restored iron gate to the walled garden.

“Is that to stop the ducks getting in?” (It’s been a good year for the mallards on the nearby lakes).

“No, rabbits.”

“I worked on the film of Watership Down, so I’m always rooting for the rabbits.”

“There’s plenty of grass out there!”

A Wigwam of Beanstalks

raspberries and tomatoesraspberriesThe garden is at it’s most productive so Barbara is busy in the kitchen, using a couple of pounds of split tomatoes in a Crank’s recipe for chilli bean and vegetable casserole, which also includes courgettes, onions, runner beans and potatoes from our garden.

She added some of today’s raspberries (we picked a bowl and a half of them) to a batch of muffins.

today's garden producerunner beansWe haven’t been able to keep up with the runner beans. A handful of the slenderest are going into the casserole but I’ve stripped off all the large stringy pods that were beginning to swell to encourage the plants to put their energy into the fresh pods which are still appearing.

As I reached inside the wigwam of beanstalks, I was surrounded by sunlit foliage. With temperatures climbing into the 70s it felt more like high summer than the beginning of autumn.

Spider and Wasp

garden spider with wasp prey orb web spiderIt’s a time of plenty for the spiders too: a jumping spider patrols the sunny kitchen windowsill and an orb spider with a web on the outside of the lounge window fusses out of its corner to check out a tiny insect which has landed on its web but just misses it as the insect breaks away.

A garden spider at the centre of a 12 inch wide web in front of the ivy at the end of the herb bed has more success. It has swathed a wasp in silk and is slowly consuming it. Unlike the spider in the corner of the window, it doesn’t retreat to a lair: it’s been there right at the centre of its web all afternoon. Two hours later it is still clutching what remains of the unfortunate wasp.

orb spider and waspWasps nested under the tiles of the roof above my studio two years ago and, during the summer months and well into a mild autumn, dozens, if not hundreds, of them somehow blundered their way into the studio and I regularly had to release them by flipping open the Velux window.

A few found their way into our hot water system and for months afterwards the odd fragment of wasp carapace would appear when we ran a bath.

waspThis year wasps have nested under tiles again but near the apex of the main roof so thankfully well away from the hot water tank.

Perch Fishing

angler“Was that a roach?”

“No, a perch.”

The angler has just unhooked a small fish and returned it to the canal. I think of perch as being deep and narrow but it takes a while for the adult to develop that impressive hump and belly.

tansyeldberryThe towpath is regularly mowed so instead of going to seed the plants along the water’s edge are still sprouting fresh flowers: tansy, greater willowherb, leafy hawkweed, red clover, yarrow and autumn dandelion. Elderberries are now ripe and we’re well into the blackberry season.

mallardHalf a dozen streaky brown mallards dabble and preen by the old weir on the Calder at Horbury Bridge. Even the normally splendid drakes go into a subdued eclipse plumage at this time of year.

CalderTwo moorhens stalk about, swimming briefly from rock to rock. moorhensAs we pause on the bridge two dragonflies zoom around below us.

Published
Categorized as Canal Tagged

The Beach House

The Beach House

PortobelloPortobello, ‘Edinburgh’s Seaside’, looks rather dour and solid as you drive through on the Musselburgh Road, but walk along the two mile promenade and there are views across the Firth of Forth and along the East Lothian coast. In my watercolour the conical hill just left of centre is North Berwick Law with Traprain Law inland on the far right.

postcardI drew this while waiting for the breakfast special, toasted banana bread with whipped mascarpone and berries, at The Beach House: the perfect place to write our postcards. This  postcard, from a watercolour by one of the customers, captures the relaxed atmosphere of the cafe and the light reflected from the sea.

Link: The Beach House Cafe