Category: Habitats

Farmyard Goose

farmyard gooseAt the car park at Cannon Hall a gaggle of about a dozen farmyard geese, mainly white, graze on the grass verge until a couple of walkers arrive with a bag of breadcrumbs.

The domestic goose is descended from the greylag but stands more upright than its wild relative because it has been selectively bred to be three times as heavy and to accumulate fat around its rear end. One of the geese had a dewlap and a similar flap hanging between its legs. This is a feature of the Toulouse, an old French breed.

In the American Pilgrim goose, males are always white and females grey.

daffodils‘Denied the opportunity to forage [geese] are uneconomic,’ writes John Woodward in The Field Guide, ‘for they have large appetites . . . the income derived from geese rarely justifies the use of valuable pasture.’

A toddler with a large bag of breadcrumbs is next in line to feed them.

Jumbo Grip Pencil

Oak at the corner of the car park, Cannon Hall (pen and watercolour).
Oak at the corner of the car park, Cannon Hall (pen and watercolour).

My drawing is a composite as these geese never keep still. I started with the head and worked down. When the birds set off in a different direction I kept adding to the sketch, transposing the shapes as if I was mirror-writing. Sometimes I’d be drawing one of the white geese, sometimes the one with the dewlap but the greyish-brown geese did have the white rear end, as I’ve drawn it here.

I drew the goose with a Faber-Castell Jumbo Grip pencil (below). With its triangular cross section and its rubberised ‘SoftGRIP’ stipples, this is one pencil that you’re not going drop even if you’re working in gloves. The matching pencil sharpener is easier to use on location than a craft knife. There’s a pencil-thin slot in my art bag that it fits neatly into so it’s not going to lose it’s point by getting jammed in with my pens and watercolours.

jumbo grip pencil

I’ve used various clutch pencils, otherwise known as propelling pencils, but they don’t have the bite of  a real pencil. The Jumbo Grip is rated B for hardness and is described as ‘ideal for learning to write’. But I like it for drawing too.

Link: Jumbo Grip Pencil

Leeds Trees

Trees in Hunslet

oliveRiver AireWhen we drop our car in for its annual service in Hunslet we like to walk alongside the River Aire to Leeds and make a day of it. Over the years on the river we’ve seen goosander, mallard, teal, cormorant, moorhen and kingfisher. We’ve seen goldfinches feeding on the cones of the riverside alders and a wagtail flitting about on a landing stage. Last year we saw our first warbler of the season, just flown in from Africa.

One year we met a knight walking his charger along the riverside path. This was at the time that the Royal Armouries Museum at Clarence Dock staged regular jousts in a tiltyard next to the museum.

Tree in HunsletI sketched the Birds of the Aire (left) on our first walk into Leeds from the garage, eleven years ago (on the same date, the 9th, and the same day of the week, a Wednesday).

Rain all day means that, for the first time, we miss out on our annual riverside ramble and content ourselves with dodging in and out of the shops in the city centre for a few hours. The art material stores of my college days in Leeds, Dinsdales and Jowett and Sowry have now moved out of the city centre so we were delighted to come across a new(ish) art and craft materials store, Fred Aldous, behind Leeds Market as you head towards Leeds Parish Church (now restyled as the Minster).

leuchtturm sketchbookNaturally I have to buy a sketchbook. Will the acid free paper in the pocket-sized Leuchtturm 1917 notebook prove more sympathetic to watercolour than the Moleskine sketchbooks that I was using last year? It’s going to be a while before I get around to trying it as I’m currently using my Derwent Black Journal as a pocket notebook, carrying it in my pocket along with a Lamy Vista pen and a small wallet of children’s crayons. I used it when drawing the trees as we waited for our car after its service at the Luscombe’s Suzuki.

Link: Birds of the River Aire, 9 March 2oo5.

First Warbler, 2 March 2015.

Fred Aldous, art & craft supplies

Leuchtturm 1917 sketchbooks

Polypody Fern

polypody sketchpolypodyThis polypody fern is growing as an epiphyte on a crooked old hawthorn on by the nature trail at the National Coal Mining Museum, Caphouse Colliery. Epiphyte is simply a plant that grows on another plant: the fern isn’t parasitic on the hawthorn. This reminds me of the mysterious Wistman’s Wood on Dartmoor where old stunted oaks grow up amongst massive tumbled slabs of granite and every surface, rock and tree, is covered with moss, lichen and fern. This is on a much smaller scale of course but it has the advantage for me that its just a couple of miles up the road.

As I shelter under an umbrella, I realise that to draw all the pinnate indentations on each leaf is going to take me a lot longer than the time that I’ve allowed, so I outline all the fronds and decide to come back another day to complete the drawing and add some colour.

Link: National Museum for Coal Mining for England, Caphouse Colliery.

Snow on the Hills

snow on the moors

mum

Mum heading for the hills in the 1940s.
Mum heading for the hills in the 1940s.

From molehills to mountains: the moors on the tops of the Pennines are still covered with snow. We returned to Charlotte’s Ice Cream parlour at Whitely this morning, a regular coffee stop in the days when we had my mum in tow. It was often the one day of the week that she got out and, despite her deteriorating eyesight, she always appreciated the panorama . . . and of course the coffee and the scone.

I must take after her. Oh dear!

Mole Map

mole mapOver the weekend I noticed that the mole has extended its excavations into the flower border below the bird feeders. For the last few weeks that single molehill, right in the middle of the lawn, had been the only sign of its activity.

moleIf I can infer the layout of its tunnels from the heaps of earth above ground, the main tunnel runs west northwest to east northeast. This is along the contour of the slope. Would a down-slope tunnel be at more risk of flooding?

The Bittern Hide

Reedbeds seen from the Bittern Hide
Reedbeds seen from the Bittern Hide, 11.40 a.m., 40ºF, 6ºC. The Reedbed hide is just visible in the background.

swanRSPB Old Moor, 10.40 a.m., 39ºF, 4ºC, Reedbed Hide: We passed through a snow shower on the way here but as we walk to the Reedbed Hide there are only a few sleety spots in the wind.

Two mute swans are upending by the reeds as they make their way to their nest site, a mound of reeds.

grebetufted duckA great crested grebe motors over towards the swans, calling as he nears them (judging by the large cheek frills, this is the male). It’s a surprisingly loud call for what I think of as one of the quietest of wildfowl. My bird book describes the grebe’s spring calls as ‘a series of guttural far-reaching “rah-rah-rah” notes’. But, instead of skirmishing with the swans, as we thought he might do, he dives near them. Perhaps when he saw how large they are in close up he decided not to escalate the situation.

Mid-lagoon, two male and one female tufted ducks are diving.

The Old Mill Race

ashbankCoxley Beck, Capri car park, 1.50 p.m., 39ºF, 4ºC, sun and showers: This ash and sycamore are growing on top of the steep bank that was once the mill race of a corn mill. The stone embankment has been eroded here, probably by flood damage. On the exposed mud banks fresh leaves are sprouting: dock, dandelion, cow parsley(?), hemlock(?), creeping buttercup, seedlings of himalayan balsam and a clump of snowdrops, which was no doubt washed down from one of the stream-side gardens. hart's tongeHigher up the bank, where it hasn’t been scoured so much by the December floods, there are a few clumps of hart’s tongue fern.

There’s a passing shower but I’ve brought my fishing umbrella so that isn’t a problem. I start adding the watercolour, lightest tones first, and, just when I’ve got those in, the sun comes out again and I’m able to mix in some neutral tint and paint in the shadows.

cropped-ashsyc.jpg

Snow Showers

snow sketch

weatherwatch reportCoxley Valley, 10 a.m., 30ºF, -2ºC: I cross the beck which is brown with melt water to draw on a flat area that, thirty years ago, was a meadow. Since then alders and crack willows have spread from the side of the beck. wild garlicAt this time of year the leaves of wild garlic are starting to show amongst them but today a centimetre of snow covers the ground.  Wet snow patters on my fishing umbrella as I draw ivy and bramble on a fallen willow.

It’s so long since I drew in the snow (as opposed to drawing it as seen through our patio windows) that I record the scene in a photograph and submit it to the BBC Weather Watchers website.

snow on log

wren fernA wren flits across the puddly path as I leave the wood and hops under a bramble; a robin sings despite the snow shower. song thrushThe song thrush by the path at the edge of the beck isn’t singing but I have heard it at the edge of the wood when I’ve been drawing in the back garden.

Link: BBC Weather Watchers

Mossy Rocks

mossy rocksI can find a quality of wilderness in moss-covered rubble, flooded fields and tumbling willows, so I didn’t have far to go to find a subject this morning. These chunks of sandstone form a wall around the raised bed behind the pond. We used the soil that we excavated from the pond to make the raised bed.

It’s a still, sunny morning with a clear blue sky but although the temperature has risen to 50ºF, 10ºC, there’s still thin ice along one side of the pond.

There’s a jingly song from the next garden which I take to be a dunnock:

‘pwik – kiwik – pwik – chEE’

dunnockMy bird book (Alan J Richards, British Birds, A Field Guide) describes the song as ‘a not unmusical jingle of notes, shorter in duration and less powerful than the Wren’s’. The wren belts out its song so emphatically that you know it means business.

Green Fire

hawthorn leaves‘Time still weaves its web. Cold winds blow across the country – but blue sky, the occasional sight of flowers are the essence of future hope. Soon the green fire will be bursting from all the hedgerows . . . and the stagnant pools will become animated with life . . .’

William Baines
William Baines

The letters and diaries of William Baines (1899-1922) reveal the way the composer drew his inspiration from the Yorkshire landscape. His impressionistic piano pieces conjure up pictures of coast, woodland and moor.

The Yorkshire of William Baines, my final project for a Diploma in Art & Design course at Leeds coincided with the 50th anniversary of his death. I started by talking to his surviving friends and relatives and went on to produce a publication, two concerts and an exhibition that at the Harrogate Festival in 1972. As a result of all this work, Roger Carpenter invited me to provide the illustrations for his biography of Baines, Goodnight to Flamborough.

Periwinkle climbing through the hedge.
Periwinkle climbing through the hedge.

I’m reminded of that ‘green fire’ quote when the hawthorn leaves start to appear in the wintry hedges. This winter was the warmest on record for central England, and records begin in 1659 so, uniquely as far as I remember, we’ve had a few green leaves in the hedge throughout the winter.

Link: William Baines, composer and pianist