Category: Habitats

Woodhorn

Woodhorn

The view of the Queen Elizabeth II Country Park, from our first-floor room in the Premier Inn, Woodhorn, near Ashington, Northumberland.

Inspired by a book that I’m reading on drawing ‘Five-minute Landscapes’, I’m trying to speed things up in my sketchbook – although I’m unlikely to manage the five-minute ideal.

I’m also still rehabilitating my right thumb, which is still hurting after eight months. This Uniball Eye pen, a fibre tip with waterproof in, seems to be a gentler, more free-flowing option than my regular fountain pen.

Shovellers at Saltholme

reedbed

Redshank, black-tailed godwit and a flock of several hundred golden plovers at RSPB Saltholme.

We took a break at the reserve on our return journey from Northumberland too, when we also saw dunlin and marsh harrier.

Smooth Sow-thistle

sow-thistle sketch

Growing beside our compost bins, Smooth Sow-thistle, Sonchus oleraceus, is a common weed of disturbed ground.

The Collins flower guide mentions the ‘acute, spreading auricles’ at the base of the leaves as a diagnostic feature.

drawing sow-thistle

It steadily flopped as I drew it but since I finished it has perked up again, so I might get another chance to add a drawing of the shape of the leaf.

Golden Hornet

While pruning the Golden Hornet crab apple I became aware that someone was watching me. Directly overhead a buzzard was hanging in the air, about 100 feet above me.

At the top of the stepladder in the crown of the tree, I had a wood pigeon’s eye-view of our newly-built raised beds.

The Weeping Birch

sketchbook page

Stan Barstow Memorial Garden, Queen Street, Horbury, 2.30 pm, 65℉, 17℃: As soon as I sit on a bench beneath a weeping silver birch, aphids and plant bugs start trundling about on my knee and over my sketchbook page.

Otter Spraints

Otter spraints neatly deposited on a mooring bollard by the canal at the Bingley Arms, Horbury Bridge. I’ve yet to see one of the otters but I was told that they’d been picked up on security cameras near the river.

Visitors

Grey Squirrel

squirrel

Soon after I finish picking up the rowan twigs I’d been pruning, a squirrel appears, carrying two peanut shells. It leaves one near the top corner of the bed and selects a spot near a plant in near the centre to bury the other.

Refilling the hole and ‘making good’ – to use a builder’s expression is a thorough process.

It picks up the peanut it left earlier and buries it with equal care near the beech hedge.

Song Thrush

thrush

The song thrush is back again for another feed on the berries before they finally drop from the sumac.

thrush

These were taken on my iPhone.

Brown Rat

brown rat

Back in the summer we saw a large brown rat scuttling across our patio in daylight and decided to take a break from feeding the birds. Three months later this didn’t seem to have made any difference as we’d still occasionally one passing through so we’ve started filling the feeders again.

When I’m doing that I inevitably spill a few sunflower hearts, assuming that the birds will soon spot them.

This afternoon though it was a medium-sized rat climbing one of the garden chairs to search around for spilt sunflower hearts on our patio table.

I’ll be more careful next time I fill the feeders but we will keep on feeding the birds. The local rat population is something that we will have to live with. All our neighbours report the same problem.

Trimming the Hedge

gloe and secateurs

I’m continuing to trim the hawthorn, holly and hazel in the hedge at the end of the garden. Neglected a bit in recent years parts are now towering out of my reach, so I’m steadily bringing it down to a reasonable size.

Maple, Ash and Sumac

ash

After recent wind, rain and the first overnight frost, next door’s maple is going down in a blaze of ochre yellow and one of the ash trees in the wood is now devoid of leaves.

blackbird

This morning two blackbirds were fighting it out over the ever-diminishing supply of sumac berries. When a song thrush flies in the spray of berries it lands on instantly detaches, plummeting to the ground and, for a moment, taking the startled thrush with it.

sparrowhawk

The small male sparrowhawk is back, again swooping down by the feeders and then pausing to perch on the hedge and again failing to catch any prey.

geese

This morning a distant chevron of geese headed down the Calder Valley but at the weekend a skein of twenty plus was heading in the opposite direction.