Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Stonecrop, viper’s bugloss, marsh woundwort, bream, banded demoiselle and a family of swans on our walk alongside the canal and the Calder today. Now we’re past midsummer’s day racken and bramble have grown up shoulder high, trees are in full leaf and on the riverside path, tall grasses are going to seed
A drake mallard stood resting by the duck pond in Thornes Park this morning. This was the only bird that didn’t move much during the whole time that I was there but I still found it difficult to draw get the correct proportion of head to body. With each drawing I started with the head but by the time I’d drawn the body I’d find myself coming back to redraw the head.
I couldn’t resist adding colour, which immediately made my sketches more mallard-like.
I drew birds in our back garden in the afternoon and, as with the mallard, added colour to each one as I went along.
The stock dove was an unusual visitor, smaller than the wood pigeon but quite capable of chasing it off, reaching out as if threatening to peck it. By the time they’d got down to the edge of the pond the wood pigeon gave up and flew away, leaving the stock dove to return to foraging beneath the bird feeders.
A group of these plants were growing on the riverbank and on a rubbly bank at the side of the riverside path behind industrial units. It looks like a relative of water avens but doesn’t have the drooping flowerheads of that species. Most of the flowers were yellowish green but some plants had flowers midway down the stem with magenta petals. A garden escape?
Next day we spotted this plant amongst the ferns at Brodsworth Hall and Gardens. It’s a Heuchera, a member of the saxifrage family from North America, so definitely a garden escape.
Taking a break on our return from Northumberland at Washington Wildfowl and Wetland Trust.
Butterbur and kingcups are in flower in a small stream or drainage ditch between the sewage works and the end Industrial Street at Horbury Junction. A fresh-looking peacock butterfly feeds on dandelions alongside the canal.
For my brother-in-law John’s big birthday plus one, a cartoon of our regular walk around Newmillerdam, which would be a quiet place if it wasn’t for all that birdsong and – on her My Yorkshire show last week – Jane McDonald singing Jessie Ware’s Remember Where You Are on the slope behind the Boathouse.
The Wakefield Naturalists’ Society had their first AGM since the pandemic on Monday but it was a case of blink and you’ll miss it, as the main event of the evening was Ron Marshall talking about Ardnamurchan, the Outer Hebrides and the Shetlands.
These sketches were drawn with a Lamy nexx with a B – bold – nib. I’m getting towards the end of my bottle of De Atramentis, an ink which soon dries, allowing me to add watercolour.
We almost gave up on this morning’s walk at RSPB Fairburn Ings as the rain seemed to be setting in but as it was so quiet there we were able to get good views of two roe deer, grazing just 50 yards from the Roy Taylor trail. This was the best of my iPhone shots, on the others they were heads down, white rumps towards us.
The reeds festooning the trees are an indication of flood levels but this morning most of the paths had dried out.
Confession time: the Parliament of Crows is a collage of four photographs. There were more crows than shown here but I couldn’t get them all to pose together for their group photograph.
In the formal pond at Harlow Carr a carrion crow picks a newt from amongst water plants.
Hellebores on the Winter Walk and in the woodland.
Feeling a bit more springlike at Newmillerdam this morning.
It was good to see water flowing on the Cascade between the Middle and Lower Lakes at Nostell this morning. We haven’t seen it in action for years. The sluice was restored but because of leakage issues the water has been diverted through a sluice and through a pipe for the last five or six years.
