Category: Habitats

Grand Arcade

Grand ArcadeLooking for some old slides I came across this Leeds street scene from the early 1970s. It’s the sort of everyday view that it would never normally occur to me to photograph. Martin Salisbury, one of our tutors in graphic design at Leeds Polytechnic, suggested that I should go out and photograph the city to bring a bit of contrast to a project on prehistoric Yorkshire that I was working on.

busThe streets that I walked through are already part of history and I wish that I’d taken more shots.

When I see archive film of events such as the miners strike of 1974 (there was another ten years later) it’s hard to believe that the environment looked so  monochromatic and dismal.

Today television dramas set this period are usually shot in low key colour. My Agfa Gavaert colour slides show that that’s not artistic license; it really was like that.

miniIt’s so long ago that even the minis were half-timbered. In every photograph that I’ve looked at so far, all the vehicles that I can identify are British-made. Those look like Rovers in the background.

And would you believe that there are no parking restrictions so near the centre of the Leeds?!

 

A Stoat amongst the Fleabane

fleabaneFleabane, Pulicaria dysenterica, grows in the meadow areas by the ponds at Old Moor.

Its ragged-edged flowers are giving way to furry clocks of achenes.

An achene is a dry fruit. They might appear to be seeds but, like any fruit, they have a covering, it’s just that in this case the covering is dry, not fleshy, and it encloses the single seed so closely that it appears to be just a extra coating for the seed.

11.16 a.m.; a movement just beyond the fleabane. Quite a substantial animal – a rat?

stoatBeady Eye

No, its a darker, glossier mahogany brown. The stoat is so close that I can see the glint in its eye as it pauses and stares at me for a few seconds then turns back on its run through the grasses.

It’s a cliche but it has beady eyes. Deep brown with a sharp highlight. It was taking me in then coming to a decision.

It reminds me of a passage from Orwell’s Coming up for Air; ‘I was looking at the field, and the field was looking at me.’

And I’ve just come across this advice to photographers;

‘Be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence.’
Minor White

I’m still not quite sure who saw who first.

Time for my morning coffee break which happens to be just as the fruit scones come out of the oven. However they should come with a health warning; I break a filling as I’m eating it and have to head back home to arrange to see my dentist!

What bad luck. It reminds me that there’s an old country superstition that a stoat crossing your path will bring you bad luck but my mum told us there was a remedy for this.

At the place where you saw the stoat, leave a coin at the side of the path and whoever picks up the coin inherits the dose of bad luck. However I really wouldn’t want anyone else to break a filling today, I couldn’t be so cruel!

A Cure for Warts

breccia pebbleShe had a similar remedy for warts; pick up as many pebbles as you have warts and put those in a paper bag.

Leave the bag lying around where it might be see by a unsuspecting passer-by. Your warts will disappear when someone opens the bag. Unfortunately they will get your warts.

Not a nice thing to do. I must ask her who taught her these folk remedies. My guess would be her granny, Sarah Ann, born 1850. Sounds just like one of her tales.

Wader Scrape

wader scrapeWader scrape hide, 1.30 pm, 59ºF, 15ºC, breezy with occasional showers

‘Here come five pandas!’ quips one birdwatcher, and he’s right, the belted Galloway cattle that form part of the little herd here have same pattern and the panda’s barrel-like rotundness. The herd move from island to island across the lagoon, like a scene from a wildlife documentary.

I’m surprised how deep the channel between the two nearest island is; the cattle launch themselves splashily from the edge and swim across.

Purple Loosestrife

purple loosestrifeThe purple loosestrife is now at its best at the RSPB Old Moor reserve.

Two photographers in search of dragonflies apologise for trawling across my field of view, requesting that I don’t include them in the picture.

A shame, they would have added some scale. The loosestrife is shoulder high.

jointed rushJointed Rush

I think of rushes as being like the hard rush and soft rush; spiky and cylindrical, like a clump of green porcupine quills, but this is a rush too; jointed rush, Juncus articulatus, gets its name because the hollow stem is divided by internal ‘joints’.

It has clusters of star-shaped brown flowers which develop into egg-shaped fruits.

 

seedheadYellow Rattle

This dry seedhead was growing on a grassy path edge. It reminds me of bluebell but we’re not in woodland – or old hedgerows – here and when I check it out in the book I’m able to confirm that it’s yellow rattle, Rhinanthus minor, which is semi-parasitic on the roots of grasses.

It is a  member of the figwort family, Scrophulariaceae.

Each rounded capsule has a short beak at its tip. As it rattles in a breeze it distributes its winged seeds.

Bands of Blue and Green

pondI felt that I was getting a bit fussy as I painted the loosestrife so I went for a simpler approach with this nearby pond. With the quickest of pencil outlines I went straight on to the rapidly changing sky and its matching reflection, followed by bands of the lightest greens in each area to indicate distant trees, meadow, reedbed and reedbed reflections, plus the nearest willows.

With every bit of paper assigned a tone I could them add mid-tones of foliage and finally the darkest patches, adding a few of the brown branches of the willows.

The Bittern Hide

View from the Bittern HideThe path to the northern end of the RSPB Old Moor reserve is closed at the moment to minimise disturbance to the resident bitterns so your best view of the reedbeds is from the Bittern Hide.

bullockstufted vetchGrazing bullocks help keep the grassy margins of the lagoons open. This afternoon they’ve congregated to chew the cud on the banking in the corner by a field gate which is sufficiently exposed to discourage flies.

great willowherbBut the breeze and the occasional showers have made it difficult to draw plants in any detail today.

The great willowherb was growing by a bridge over a drainage ditch while the tufted vetch was climbing amongst the dried grass to a height of three feet with the aid of tendrils at the end of its leaves.

Willow

willow9.47 a.m.; A skein of forty Canada geese approach, honking as they go, from the north-west. The lead bird, followed by the rest of the chevron, has to make a considerable effort to climb to clear the power lines above me.

Grey willow, Salix cinerea, grows in damp acid soils, often, has here near ponds. It has a low spreading habit. A typical grey willow leaf tapers gradually from near the tip towards the base. The goat willow which you can find in similar habitats typically has a more rounded leaf.

Water’s Edge

phragmites‘A reed shaken by the wind’ is my subject at Old Moor today. I’ve labelled it as the common reed, Phragmites communis, but Wikipedia points out that communis is considered an ‘illegitimate name’ and that I should now be calling it Phragmites australis.

It resists the wind not just by its flexibility and its hollow stem construction but because the leaves, growing from sheathes that clasp the stem can rotate as they’re blown around.

water-lilyWhile my habitual pen and brown ink might be appropriate for the reed, but I felt that would be too strident for the white water-lily, Nymphaea alba. Dragonflies zoomed around over the pond but the only insects visiting the water-lily as I drew it were a few flies.

water mintWater mint, Mentha aquatica, is now in flower, growing along the edges of the drainage ditches.

water plantainWater plantain, Alisma plantago-aquatica, was growing next to it, emerging from the water. Ruskin saw the elegant arrangement of veins in its leaves as an example of the kind of ‘divine proportion’ that inspired Gothic architecture.

When Convent Thoughts, a sharp-focus study of a contemplative nun standing by a lily pond by the Pre-Raphaelite painter Charles Allston Collins’, came in for criticism at the 1851 Royal Academy summer show, Ruskin wrote in a letter to The Times;

“I happen to have a special acquaintance with the water plant Alisma Plantago . . and . . I never saw it so thoroughly or so well drawn. For as a mere botanical study of the Water Lily and Alisma, as well as of the common lily and several other garden flowers, this picture would be invaluable to me, and I heartily wish it were mine.”

Ruskin’s endorsement helped redress the criticism but, although habitat may be right for it, Alisma plantago, the water plantain, doesn’t appear in the painting.

Howgate Wonder

Howgate WonderIt’s been our best year so far for our Howgate Wonder double cordon. I pruned off all the extraneous growth early in the year and I’ve just given it a summer prune, leaving two or three buds on each twig to encourage fruit buds to form.

After Biscuit

meadowThe meadow is already starting to look lank and overgrown, not just because it’s the time of year when tall grasses dry up and plants go to seed but also because its resident grazer, Biscuit, the temperamental Welsh pony, has moved on.

The new owners knew what they were taking on. One afternoon a few weeks ago we saw three girls, early teenage and younger, cautiously approaching him, feeding and stroking him then gradually introducing a harness.

BiscuitA few minutes later we heard a commotion; Biscuit was galloping up the field towards his stable, evidently upset about something. One of the older girls walked after him, the other stood watching. She seemed unconcerned about the youngest who was lying in the long grass, stunned. Eventually she got up with difficulty and limped off up the field, here jodhpurs hanging in long streamers, split on both sides the full length of her legs.

Published
Categorized as Meadow

Ledsham Vale

scabiousThe Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s Ledsham Vale is a long thin strip of meadow so as the rest of group make their way to the top end I can pause to draw field scabious.

We saw six or seven fresh-looking marbled whites.