Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
A mallard – possibly a youngster as it seems to be in the process of growing secondary wing feathers for the first time – standing at the cascading outlet of Newmillerdam lake this morning.
Meanwhile this adult female and her mate were paddling alongside the Boathouse Cafe.
Today’s module in Ben Hawkins’ Complete Beginner’s Photography Course explores movement, so he suggests techniques to freeze or alternatively blur the action of speeding vehicles or to capture traffic trails at night but I’ve headed for Coxley Beck to try some long exposures of flowing water.
For these one- to two-second exposures a tripod was essential and, as with the macro flower shots yesterday, using an app on my iPhone to trigger the camera and set the focus point made things a lot easier than squinting through the viewfinder. It also cut out any chance of camera shake.
Wearing wellies, I painted these hawthorns on a bend of Coxley Beck in April 1996. They were overhanging the deeper outside bank and since then the beck has undercut them and they ended up in the stream.
Jenny, natural history illustrator, drawing by our pond. She recently completed a commission to illustrate an information board about the wildlife at a pond on a nature reserve in West Sussex.
She started on John Norris Wood’s natural history illustration course at the Royal College of Art a year after I left, in 1976 and graduated in 1979, focussing on the Chelsea Physic Garden, it’s history and plants.
The American signal crayfish has established itself in our local stream, which might be bad news for any of our native white-clawed crayfish that have hung on there. The good news is that otters like to eat them, so hope that they return to to our stream.
Remains of an old coal staith, a loading bay for barges, on the west side of Balk Lane bridge over the Calder and Hebble Navigation It served the former Hartley Bank Colliery, which closed in the late 1960s.
The curved parapet of the bridge was originally capped by gently curved coping stones to prevent the tow-ropes of horse-drawn barges getting snagged. At this bridge you could have turned around the barge – and filled it up at the coal staith – without disconnecting the tow-rope.
Further upstream to the west approaching Horbury Bridge the canal passes a cutting so on this stretch towed barges heading upstream and downstream must have had some way of passing each other.
From my 1964-65 negatives, this is one of the two coal staithes (loading bays) at Hartley Bank Colliery.
The original (left) was in such a poor state that I’ve coloured it to make it more readable.
The same scene today is more green and rural, so I’ve superimposed my original 50 mm 127 frame on a wide angle iPhone shot of the same view today, taken from the bridge at the bottom of the Balk.
Apologies to ‘Ghosts of Horbury’ on our Horbury and Sitlington History Group Facebook page. I now realise how difficult it is to match up the perspective!
From my 1964-65 negatives, this was probably my first visit the what was then a West Riding County Council nature reserve at Fairburn Ings (now an RSPB reserve).
I’ve colourised the shot of the information board but this black and white of the mute swans probably gives a better impression of the way the lagoon was surrounded by colliery spoil in its early days.
On my errands this morning I managed to find time for a quick walk around Newmillerdam lake, plus a break for coffee, cake and a sketch.
Sunday, 14 May, 2.30 pm: To me the River Idle, downstream from Retford at the Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust Idle Valley reserve, looks pristine. Its clear with long tresses of water-weeds wafting in the current, although I haven’t spotted any fish darting around but its designation is that it has a ‘moderate’ ecological status, although it’s ‘good’ for invertebrates and fish get a rating of ‘high’.