Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
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.
Coming home from Leeds on the 116. Colour added later.
Wearing wellies, I painted these hawthorns on a bend of Coxley Beck in April 1996. They were overhanging the deeper outside bank and since then the beck has undercut them and they ended up in the stream.
Jenny, natural history illustrator, drawing by our pond. She recently completed a commission to illustrate an information board about the wildlife at a pond on a nature reserve in West Sussex.
She started on John Norris Wood’s natural history illustration course at the Royal College of Art a year after I left, in 1976 and graduated in 1979, focussing on the Chelsea Physic Garden, it’s history and plants.
Mosey Downgate, RSPB Bempton Cliffs, 12.30 pm, Thursday 6 July, 69℉ 24℃: Most of the kittiwake chicks now have conspicuous black stripes along their forewings, although there are some downy chicks still around. One birdwatcher tells me that he was here a month ago and he estimates there are now three times as many nesting.
The warden suggests that this impression might be because a month ago many of the pairs were nest building and spending more time away from the cliffs. Kittiwake numbers are stable at Bempton but nationally the bird is in decline, so the wardens are keeping a close watch on numbers.
Two young wood pigeons looking relaxed in our golden hornet crab apple.
My favourite view from Wakefield’s Riding Centre multistorey?
Since the Hannah Starkey show at the Hepworth, the view that I always park facing is the one of the flats on Kirkgate.
In Starkey’s thoughtfully stage-managed take on this scene, she gives Wakefield an aura of Indie movie sophistication (which it has, especially on a morning like today’s). One of her characters leans on the parapet, like a split-hair-dyed Rapunzel, looking out over the cloud-capped towers of Wakefield.
Seedheads from the garden: Opium Poppy, Eastern Mediterranean; Sicilian Honey Lily, Mediterranean, Turkey and Black Sea; Chives, Temperate Europe, Asia and North America and Perennial Cornflower from the subalpine meadows and open woods of Europe.
These sketches from the hospital and the one of the wood were drawn with one of my regular fountain pens, the TWSBI Eco T.
But I’ve gone back to a fibre tip for these wood pigeons and sparrows in the back garden.
These were drawn with a Mitsubishi uni pin 0.3 fine line, which has water and fade proof pigment ink.
Cat’s-ear, Hypochaeris radicata, flowering and going to seed on the front lawn, which I left untrimmed during ‘No Mow May’ but which is now due for strimming.