Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
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.
I’m working on my July issue of my Wild Yorkshire nature diary for The Dalesman using Adobe InDesign and Photoshop to fit everything in.
Being pressed for space I’ve tried to fit the swarming bees into the margin and, to add to the drama, instead of my usual smiling mugshot, I’ve tried a cartoon of Barbara and I on bee alert, blocking holes with steel wool and masking tape. This might not make it into the final cut, but I like to experiment.
We helped this toad across the towpath on the narrow strip of land between the canal and the river. It was heading in the direction of a marshy field, the Wyke, on a meander of the River Calder. Also crossing the towpath, a larger female toad with a small male clinging tightly to her back.
Black-headed gull, moorhen, mallard and Canada goose at Thornes Park duck pond this morning.
It got a bit neglected during the heatwave but now’s a good time to strim back the vegetation around the pond and trim the hawthorn hedges.
I had a near miss as I strimmed around the pond when I disturbed a large frog, but fortunately it hopped away unharmed. I’ve left a fringe of vegetation around the edges of the pond.
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.
We haven’t recorded a fox at the end of the garden on the trail cam for weeks now so, as we’ve recently trimmed back around the pond and scooped out the duckweed, I’ve set up my Browning Strike Force Pro XD trail cam there. This morning at 10 it recorded a dunnock (above) followed a few minutes later by a house sparrow.
Ten minutes earlier this greenfinch had been down at the pond’s edge.
It looks as if it’s drying itself off after bathing but, if it had been, the camera didn’t catch it. I need to clear out the last of the duckweed to give the birds better access.
At eleven o’clock yesterday the inevitable wood pigeon waddled by and a squirrel bounded along, slightly blurred on the photograph.
With a closer camera angle and a bit of stage management of duckweed and pebbles, this could be the perfect spot for a back garden stake-out.
My thanks to Connie, Sofia and Annabelle for doing a bit of pond dipping in our back garden yesterday. They reported a single large water beetle and the odd damselfly larva but they made no mention of tadpoles or young frogs. That might be because of the numbers of newts in the pond.
Smooth Newts 22, of which only 5 were female, so in this sample less than a quarter of the population is female. On the occasions that I’ve seen a newt caught by a blackbird I’ve often spotted the bright orange belly of the male.
A greenbottle settled on my sketchbook as I drew the first of the kingcups at the edge of the pond. Its blue-green metallic armour wouldn’t be out of place on a CGI robot but the it makes a living in the down-to-earth business of recycling: its maggot stage feeds on carrion.
The adult will also feast on carrion but is also attracted to flowers . . . and dung.
My macro photograph of a kingcup flower shows a cluster of stamens. The carpel, the female part of the plant, is almost hidden amongst them at the centre. The female carpels standing in the centre appear to be slightly notched on top, rather than rounded like the stamens and they’re very slightly greener.
I’ve started a new sketchbook for an online illustration course (more of that later). We’re asked to sign our name on the first page and write the date . . .
The difficult ones first! I knew it was the 2nd.
I had an idea of how I’d like to draw the unfurling croziers of the male fern, growing by the pond. It didn’t work out the way I’d hoped, probably because I wasn’t close enough to take in the detail I’d intended to add.
But that’s an advantage of a sketchbook, as opposed to a commission, I can relax and move on to the next drawing. Really enjoyed drawing these.