Category: Water

Crow and Newt

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.

Cascade Bridge

cascade

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.

Stable block at Nostell, drawn as we waited in the queue for coffee.

Mooring Ring

The bridge at the end of the Balk over the Calder & Hebble Canal, Addingford, and a mooring ring on Beeston Bridge, by the Strands, Horbury Bridge.

Published
Categorized as Canal

Overflow

There’s a bit of a log jam where fallen crack willow debris has formed a leaky dam across Coxley Beck so after recent rain it’s overflowed amongst the alders.

Drawn in Adobe Fresco using the conté crayon, with a few lines ‘scratched’ into it using the eraser.

The View from the Terrace

Newmillerdam

This morning our pond had frozen over but a month from today the days will start getting longer.

On the little roof terrace at the Boathouse Cafe, Newmillerdam, black-headed gulls glide past the castellated balustrade a few feet away from me at eye level, a fluid, effortlessly elegant flight. A grebe preens out on the lake, a male goosander swims by, crisply black and white in the low winter sun.

A coot calls tetchily, mallards quack and the smell of fresh coffee drifts up from the kitchen below.

Heron Fishing

heron sketches

10.15 am, sunny, slight breeze: A heron is patiently watching and stalking in the shallows by an old coot’s nest near the outlet of Newmillerdam Lake. This is an immature bird; it has moulted out of its brown juvenile plumage but still has a shade of grey on its neck. It has yet to grow its crest into the breeding adult’s pigtails.

heron sketches

But it’s successful with its watch, bend neck and lightning-fast stab technique of fishing, catching two small fish in the space of 5 or 10 minutes. The second fish seems to me to be rather squat, and I wondered if it might be a bullhead.

Canada geese and tufted duck sketches

By the time that I move over to the Canada geese, gathering around someone feeding them near the main car park, my pen has stopped running freely, perhaps because there’s a bit of grease on my sketchbook page or the ink is running low. I bend down from the fishing platform and dabble the nib in the water. I like the transparent effect it gives to my drawing.

The tufted duck is so buoyant that it needs a little burst of power to push itself below the surface. It looks to me as if almost the whole duck jumps out of the water before diving sharply in headfirst, with legs ready to act as paddles to propel it deeper.