Category: Water

Riverside Walk

A couple of tawny mining bees were making a start on their burrows at the edge of the riverside path.

violet

By the canal towpath a few common dog-violets are in flower.

speedwell

And a patch of germander speedwell.

white deadnettle

Red deadnettle has been conspicuous for a while and now a patch of white deadnettle is coming into flower. Deadnettle it might be but I managed to rub my hand on a stinging nettle as I took this photograph, then kneel on one too.

alderfly

We spotted a few alderflies by the canal. The can soon disappear when they land amongst the grasses and dead plant stems but this one settled on my leg, giving me a chance to take a close-up.

crucifer

There’s been a lot of this small white crucifer sprinkled in drifts alongside the towpath. I haven’t got the leaves showing in this photograph, so I can’t narrow down which species it is: a bitter-cress perhaps?

mine

In a nibbled bramble leaf, a long and winding leaf mine. A scar at the end might indicate where, after pupation, the adult insect emerged. Alternatively it could be where a bird spotted it as a potential prey item.

rcury

There are fresh leaves of dog’s mercury in hedge banks and along the woodland edge. These appear to be plants with male flowers: I think those are stamens covered with pollen.

The Weir at the Hepworth

Facing upstream, I get the impression that the Hepworth is gently moving, the feeling you get when you’re on a train in a station and the train on the adjacent line starts gradually edging away in the opposite direction.

This is pencil and watercolour crayon, a change from my usual pen and watercolour because its dry media only if you’re working in the galleries. The Hepworth encourage people to draw and have folding stools available.

The gooseberry crumble cake with a latte in the downstairs cafe is another attraction on a barely-above-freezing morning.

The Strands in Flood

At the Strands, the canal overflowed the towpath, leaving grassy debris along the lower wires of fences. Both canal-side pubs – the Bingley Arms and the Navigation – had their cellars flooded. Further downstream at Broad Cut Low Lock, one boat sank and two were dumped on the banking by the flood waters.

Common Darter

common darter
common darterr

Still around at the beginning of November, two male common darter dragonflies, Sympetrum striolatum, were resting on a fence by the play area at RSPB Saltholme.

Hauxley Nature Reserve

Hauxley

The Lookout Cafe at the Northumberland Wildlife Trust Hauxley Nature Reserve is an ideal place to sketch.

Hauxley

At the opposite corner of the reserve, on the lagoon near the outlet to Druridge Bay, a female gadwall is dabbling amongst a raft of washed-up kelp.

Hauxley bird sketches

The spindle has fuchsia-red fruits which remind me of miniature pumpkins. It looks as if most of the orange berries of sea buckthorn have already been eaten, perhaps by redwings and fieldfares, but there are a few clumps left close to the path. We had a glimpse of what I thought was a flock of redwings going over, if so, these are the first that we’ve seen this year.

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.

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.

The Grebe in Winter

grebe

Many birders these days go to the trouble of carrying a DSLR with a long lens to record any mystery bird. I’ve always got my iPhone with me but it’s not much good for birds any distance away so I’ll try to make some quick field notes, as I did with this winter plumage great crested grebe a few years ago.

The Victorian naturalists were meticulous with their records but the ultimate proof of identity for them was to shoot the bird itself. That was the fate of this winter-plumage great crested grebe which turned up at Bretton Lakes.

Mr Wilkinson, a painter and decorator for the Bretton Hall estate, who presented it to me in 1964, explained that the bird had turned up and no one knew what it was, so they shot it. There’s no label on the case, so I don’t know the date. Presumably late Victorian or Edwardian.

Curled Dock

Fine strands of dodder twirl around the clusters of flowers at the top of this curled dock’s stem. Dodder is a parasitic climbing plant, a member of the convolvulus family.