Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
It’s my final day of taking five black and white photographs a day but this time I didn’t get the chance to go further than the back garden. The mossy lawn, overgrown pond and garden shed didn’t look very inspiring but as soon as I saw the honey fungus on the path I began to focus in on the grassroot jungle of the meadow and the moss garden on the sandstone rocks surrounding the raised bed.
At Notton Bridge the Trans Pennine Trail passes the Chevet branch line, itself now a traffic-free cycle route and, in part, a nature reserve.
Photographed this morning on the nature trail at the National Coal Mining Museum for England, Caphouse Colliery, Overton, West Yorkshire.
A grey heron doggedly makes its morning rounds against an equally grey sky.
The cathedral spire, looming out of the afternoon fog, appears to connect with the cloud base.
The Westgate gulls are there again, gyrating around some centre of attraction hidden down in the brick-banked beck.
A few white trumpets of greater bindweed remain on the twisting vines on a chain-link fence at the edge of a car park.
I return to a dozen wasps, some dozy, some dead, to evict from my studio this afternoon. The way three of them were huddling up in the top corner of the window this morning, I’d guess that they were hunkering down for the winter but only the queens will make it through to the spring.
They’ve been nesting in the roof-space in an ever-expanding colony since midsummer.
A hill across the Calder valley from Wakefield has been created by landfill, taking waste from across the district and beyond. I’ve seen huge flocks of gulls swirling over it but this afternoon they’re gathering in smaller groups on playing fields around the city and near Westgate Beck, which runs alongside the Dewsbury road into town.
As the sun sets, more gulls are making their way down the valley towards Pugneys country park lake, which has long been a gull roost.
Distant moors are turning bronze-gold as the sun dips behind them. From Pinderfields, looking back to the city across twelve acres of open fields (now earmarked for residential development) you appreciate how Wakefield, a market town at least since early medieval times, fits into the landscape.
Migrating birds travelling north or south across Yorkshire or from east and west across the Pennines, follow similar routes to the Roman roads, packhorse trails, inland navigation, rail routes and motorways that have played such a part in the development of the town.
A ragged row of trees by a car park on the edge of the city has now turned to full autumn ochre.
We’ve got an impressive crop of leeks but some are going to seed and there’s mildew on the leaves. Time to make some soup and bag some ready-prepared in the freezer.
The back lawn is more moss than grass down by the pond and the pond itself has been in need of clearing of duckweed since the summer.
Come to think of it, every bit of the garden needs a clear-out for the winter, including the greenhouse, where a few ripe tomatoes still hang on the vines.
The big black and white tomcat swaggers through the meadow. A new addition to his territory is a bonfire night rocket. Not quite as impressive as landing a probe on a comet.
Mid-November and there’s still a lot in flower and a lot of spring flowering shrubs and flowers appearing early.
Most poppies have seedheads that resemble pepper pots; the Welsh poppy has slots. They remind me of Gaudi’s cathedral towers.
I’ve got a chance to linger over coffee at a table overlooking the cathedral precinct listening to a song I’ve never heard before, but which could provide a theme-tune for the urban sketcher;
‘Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag
And bury them in the sea . . .’
Sung by Lloyd Wade in the song by Eliza Doolittle. In my case, I can pack up my troubles in my A5 art-bag.
A friend spots me and tells me that she’s finding watercolour painting a wonderful escape from some ongoing medical problems in her family that she’s been coping with for years.
Nothing could be more therapeutic than sitting here with a latte, a toasted teacake and a sketchbook.
Maple syrup pancakes, a mocha and a maple tree. A suitably leafy outlook for my morning break. The man with the blue gloves is about to shampoo the driveway of McDonald’s, here at the Cathedral Retail Park, Wakefield.
I added the red sign as a spot of colour contrast then realised that it’s in the wrong place; Staples office supplies store is over to the right but they’ve just put up their sign on the store that was left empty following the collapse of electrical retailer Comet a year ago.
Rather than abandon the Wainwright sketchbook with the absorbent paper, I’ve been looking through my pens, trying a Mitsubishi Uni Power Tank ballpoint for these tree tops and a Sharpie Liquid Pencil for the Mac’s maple.
I’m longing to settle down to some real drawing with more sympathetic drawing materials but at the moment I’ve got a lot of waiting rooms and wards to visit so it’s a good opportunity to finish off my current so-so sketchbook.
A perfect September morning to walk around Langsett Reservoir; through the conifer plantations, across the river Little Don and up onto the moor.
Not such a restful day for the red grouse and the brown trout though. The gamekeepers and beaters were getting in place (you might spot them moving through the trees on one of the shots of the river) to wave flags while walking across the moor whooping and hollering, accompanied by their dogs, driving the grouse towards the guns.
We hurried across the moor before they started and missed out on our coffee stop at the ruined farm known as North America, pausing instead by a lichen-covered rock overlooking the stream on the far side of the moor.
A student in full-length waders emerged from the stream. He explained that he was from the University of Hull, setting up a project to monitor the movements of brown trout by tagging them and installing a couple of electronic sensors, one where the stream runs into the lake, the other further upstream.
Unfortunately my recordings of natural sounds – running water, bird calls and the wind in the heather – were interrupted by the sound of the plastic lens cap, which is attached to the camera by a loop, rattling in the breeze so I’ve added a music track.
My thanks to Silent Partner for making Days are Long available for use on my YouTube video.
If you’ve got a fast connection, Langsett looks good in HD.
Filmed with my FujiFilm FinePix S6800. The shots that I didn’t use my little ‘Spider’ tripod for needed image stabilisation in iMovie.
Link; Silent Partner on YouTube
