9.47 a.m.; A skein of forty Canada geese approach, honking as they go, from the north-west. The lead bird, followed by the rest of the chevron, has to make a considerable effort to climb to clear the power lines above me.
Grey willow, Salix cinerea, grows in damp acid soils, often, has here near ponds. It has a low spreading habit. A typical grey willow leaf tapers gradually from near the tip towards the base. The goat willow which you can find in similar habitats typically has a more rounded leaf.
‘A reed shaken by the wind’ is my subject at Old Moor today. I’ve labelled it as the common reed, Phragmites communis, but Wikipedia points out that communis is considered an ‘illegitimate name’ and that I should now be calling it Phragmites australis.
It resists the wind not just by its flexibility and its hollow stem construction but because the leaves, growing from sheathes that clasp the stem can rotate as they’re blown around.
While my habitual pen and brown ink might be appropriate for the reed, but I felt that would be too strident for the white water-lily, Nymphaea alba. Dragonflies zoomed around over the pond but the only insects visiting the water-lily as I drew it were a few flies.
Water mint, Mentha aquatica, is now in flower, growing along the edges of the drainage ditches.
Water plantain, Alisma plantago-aquatica, was growing next to it, emerging from the water. Ruskin saw the elegant arrangement of veins in its leaves as an example of the kind of ‘divine proportion’ that inspired Gothic architecture.
When Convent Thoughts, a sharp-focus study of a contemplative nun standing by a lily pond by the Pre-Raphaelite painter Charles Allston Collins’, came in for criticism at the 1851 Royal Academy summer show, Ruskin wrote in a letter to The Times;
“I happen to have a special acquaintance with the water plant Alisma Plantago . . and . . I never saw it so thoroughly or so well drawn. For as a mere botanical study of the Water Lily and Alisma, as well as of the common lily and several other garden flowers, this picture would be invaluable to me, and I heartily wish it were mine.”
Ruskin’s endorsement helped redress the criticism but, although habitat may be right for it, Alisma plantago, the water plantain, doesn’t appear in the painting.
I’ve been back at the RSPB’s Old Moor reserve, keeping my focus on flowers, which makes sense as it’s rather a quiet time for birds. I’ve added more drawings to some of last week’s pages.
Sketches made over the last two days at RSPB Old Moor, South Yorkshire. Having practiced some botanical illustration in the studio last week, I wanted to see how I could carry that through into sketchbook work.
It was so warm at lunchtime today that I took shelter in the family hide, which was pleasantly cool with all the flaps open and light; unusually for a hide it has floor to ceiling windows. Again with improving my observation in mind, I concentrated on one species, the lapwing, until a black-headed gull chased it away.
Great burnet and yellow-rattle.
A variable species, this was growing in a dry area, by a hedge near the visitor centre.
Marsh orchid, probably the Northern Marsh Orchid.
Scrambling amongst vegetation by the marsh.
Melilot, a tall leguminous herb on drier ground.
Lapwing in moult. I guess that it’s an adult but it could be a juvenile coming into its adult plumage.
Purple loosestife – my last sketch of the day and it proved quite a challenge with all those interlocking stems and foliage, especially as it kept blowing about in the afternoon breeze.
9.47 a.m.; A skein of forty Canada geese approach, honking as they go, from the north-west. The lead bird, followed by the rest of the chevron, has to make a considerable effort to climb to clear the power lines above me.
