Category: Habitats

Crusty Lichen

crustose lichensporangia10.30 a.m.: At first sight this crustose lichen looks like nothing more than a pale stain on the sandstone block at the edge of the raised bed behind the pond. I’m using crayons this morning and the nearest match that I can get is mineral green, applied very lightly with a dash of other colours added. Using watercolours I would have got nearer to the grey in my photograph.

The black oval sporangia* are about a millimetre across.

crustose lichenA neighbouring colony of the same lichen is more densely peppered with sporangia and they appear to me to have a slight brownish cast, like coffee grounds.

I find the details easier to take in on my macro photographs than in real life but peering closely I notice a springtail wandering by. The springtail is a hexapod and it is no longer classified as an insect.

Continue reading Crusty Lichen

Hemlock Water Dropwort

hemlock water dropwort10.45 a.m., 48ºF, 9ºc, overcast, cool; Hemlock water dropwort grows on a silty, gravelly inside bend of the stream by the sawn-off bough of a crack willow. Its luxuriant, fresh-looking rosettes spring up along the banks and even in a few places from the stream bed itself. It’s not surprising that none of the leaves has been nibbled because every part of this plant is extremely toxic.

squirrel poleThe harsh chatter of magpies contrasts with the restful rhythmic babbling of the brook. That’s a cliche but babbling is the only way to describe it this morning.

wagtailA smart looking grey wagtail, a male, performs a mid-air pirouette when I disturb it and its mate flitting about over a gravelly section of the stream at the entrance to the wood.

A grey squirrel has been leaning over to reach our solid-looking ‘squirrel proof’ sunflower heart feeder. As it hangs upside down from the pole, it rotates the feeder with its front legs, always in a clockwise direction. Eventually this unscrews the feeder from its hook and the lid comes off as it crashes to the ground. I pick pigeonup what seed I can and replace the feeder. Blackbird, robin, goldfinch and pheasant appreciate the bonus of spilt seed but it’s the wood pigeon that steadily gets through it.

Bladder Wrack

 bladder wrackWhen I picked up this piece of bladder wrack at Sandsend it looked fresh but it has dried out so much that I doubt it would plump up if I soaked it in water.

As I mention in the note, it has pairs of gas-filled bladders on either side of the midrib of the frond.

It is found in the middle of the intertidal zone on rocky shores.

Blast Furnace Slag

blast furnace slagblast furnace slagI picked up what I think is a piece of blast furnace slag from the beach at Sandsend last week. It looks a bit like a motorway chipping with the contrast of limestone fragments and black coating but the top surface is hard and pockmarked with bubbly holes, so this fragment has been subjected to intense heat.

There were ironstone workings at Sandsend.

Frog Fest

frogfrogs1.40 p.m., sunny, 51ºF, 12ºC; I counted twenty-seven clumps of frogspawn yesterday and assumed that was it, the party was over, but today the frogs are back in action.

I sneak up on them with an iPad and attempt to record the sound of them croaking and to film them. I find that the iPad is a bit cumbersome to hold steadily so, without making any sudden movements, I retrace my steps to collect camera, tripod and sketchbook.

Hope to upload the movie later.

A pair of siskins feed on the sunflower hearts, just a few yards from me as I sit sketching the frogs.

Golden Saxifrage

golden saxifrage3.10 p.m., 45°F, 7ºC; A little black fly visits the tiny flowers dotted with yellow stamens of the golden saxifrage, growing on the bank of the beck in the wood. In Plant and Planet, Anthony Huxley writes that golden saxifrage is also pollinated by springtails. Springtails feed amongst the leaf litter and need humid conditions.

Coxley beckIt’s not obvious from my drawing, but, when I went back and checked, I found that this is the opposite-leaved golden saxifrage (there’s also an alternate-leaved species), Chrysoslenium oppositifolium, a common native plant of wet, acid soils in habitats such as woodland flushes, springs and stream sides.

The golden saxifrage is dotted along the waters edge like dapples of sunlight in this rare un-trampled corner of the wood, alongside bramble, nettle, lesser celandine and bluebell (not yet in flower) which spread further onto the banking amongst holly, hazel and hawthorn.wood pigeon

Blackbird and robin are singing, a pair of wrens perch on a log and flit off into the undergrowth. There’s a clatter of wings in the top of an ivy-covered alder as one wood pigeon harasses another.

Motorway Corridor

motorway embankmentgullOn our morning errands, we take a break at Starbuck’s, Calder Park, next to junction 39 of the M1 motorway. We’re on the verge of spring but in the view from our table the only area of green is winter wheat on the far side of the Calder valley at Lupset.

pegeonBlack-headed gulls, now with neat chocolate brown masks, flap and glide in random search mode above the car park. A town pigeon zooms off on more urgent business.

Bilberry and Heather

heather and bilberrylichen covered rock11.20 a.m, mid-height stratus, cool breeze: I’m reminded of the piece of childhood writing that I re-read the other day (Blue Remembered Hills):

‘I found a dry bog plant and a stone with water trickling down the middle and green on the stone around it’

That was when I was aged nine and here I am, over half a century later, still fascinated by the plants and rocks of millstone grit moorland. No wonder I feel as if I’ve come back down to earth every time that we get out here.

I add colour using watercolour pencils but, once again, I’ve forgotten to bring my water-brush so I dab it with a finger moistened in a puddle on the moorland track.

club moss fossilGiant Club Moss Fossil

I draw the club moss fossil in the comfort of the Bank View Cafe at the end of the walk. I’ve spotted a few impressions of Carboniferous plants in the millstone grit blocks that make up some stretches of the path at Langsett and someone has brought together a small selection of plant fossils on the windowsill in the cafe. Shouldn’t every cafe should have a collection of local fossils, rocks and minerals?

Peregrine on the Spire

Wakefield Cathedral spire is 247 feet high. Whenever I try to picture a thousand feet, I think of four Wakefield Cathedral towers.
Wakefield Cathedral spire is 247 feet high. Whenever I try to picture a thousand feet, I think of four Wakefield Cathedral towers.

peregrine11.10 a.m., 49ºF, 9ºC, Wakefield Cathedral; A flock of  town pigeons circles and chacking jackdaws return to the belfry ia the louvred shutters, unperturbed by the presence of a peregrine preening on a crocket, halfway up the north-east side of the spire.

It’s wonderful to be able to sit on a bench in the precinct and sketch a peregrine. jackdawsWhen I started birdwatching in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the first peregrines that I saw were in a remote glen in Scotland and on the far south-west corner of Wales, on the Pembrokeshire coast.

Nest platform attached to crenelations.
Nest platform attached to crenelations.

Over much of the country they had been wiped out through partly through persecution but probably more because of pesticide residues in their prey species, which caused a thinning of the shells of their eggs.

Link: Wakefield Peregrines

First Frogs

Emley Moor transmitter seen from across the Calder valley from Horbury, 11 a.m.
Emley Moor transmitter seen from across the Calder valley in Horbury, five miles to the northwest, 11 a.m.

2.30 p.m., overcast, merest hint of drizzle, 51ºF, 11ºC: Frog activity has started again in the pond. I counted seven but I guess there are ten in all, hidden in corners.

greenfinchIn the branches of the crab apple a greenfinch gives its nasal intake of breath through clenched teeth call – ‘Jeeeez!’

female blackbirdBlue tits continue to take an interest in the nest-box. Two female blackbirds fight it out by the shed. A male hops in between the two of them, as if to say ‘now cool it down.’

We two frogs together clinging

frogsThere are two frogs at my feet, one clinging to the other at the edge of the pond. I’m relieved to see the elegantly wafting tail of a male smooth newt in the depths below. I did wonder whether the female blackbird that developed the knack of catching them last year had eliminated them altogether.

Newt catching last year.
Newt catching last year.

I cleared overhanging plants and a lot of the pondweed a month ago so if the same female returns this year, she won’t be able to perch on so much emergent vegetation. I’ve left a big clump of pondweed in the deepest section so there’s plenty of room for the newts to hide.