Category: Woodland

Widescreen Watercolours

I’m starting a 12 x 6 inch format Pink Pig sketchbook, 150 gsm textured Ameleie paper (their own make). I’ve started with a couple of half-hour watercolour sketches, trying to get away from my usual approach of drawing in detail first, then colouring in.

View from my window, overlooking the lower end of Coxley Valley.

I quickly drew outlines in pencil for my first sketch (top) but started straight off in watercolour with the second.

Studio window

Yesterday I’d made a start: I’ve drawn this view (below) from the garden centre at Shelley several times over the years but I draw it as if I’m recording the shapes of fields and woodland for a sketch map. Yesterday, fortified with latte and an elderflower and blueberry flapjack, I dived straight in with the Pentel Aquash water brush.

View from the Shelley Garden Centre yesterday.

Link

Pink Pig 12 x 6 sketchbook

Birch

birch

New Hall Wood, Midgley, 40℉, 5℃: The holly sapling next to this twin trunk of silver birch already has a stem of honeysuckle climbing up it, twisting loosely anti-clockwise as seen from above. As you’d expect, the patch of moss is on the shady north-facing side of the tree.

Great to be back drawing on location. Robin singing from a holly bush, crows cawing. As I attach my sketchbook to my drawing board it drops onto damp moss, leaving a greenish smear across the page, providing a patina for my drawing.

Quest Coxley

magazine spread

My November ‘Dalesman’ article: ‘Quest Coxley’, an intrepid search for the source of Coxley Beck, filmed on Standard 8, April 1966, with my friend John, armed with a 19th-century cavalry sword, in the Indiana Jones role.

My dad’s Leitz Leicina Standard 8 cine camera which we used for the film.

Stoneycliffe Wood

Coxley Beck

The wild garlic is at its most deliciously pungent this morning at the top, marshier end of Stoneycliffe Wood Yorkshire Wildlife Trust reserve.

wild garlic
peacock butterfly

Wild garlic, also known as ransons, Allium ursinum.

A tattered peacock butterfly, Nymphalis io, pauses to feed on the flowers.

Roe Deer Slots

roe deer slots

Our neighbours have spotted deer in the valley recently so I was on the look-out for tracks. The size – about 2 inches, 5cm – fits roe deer, the species that is often seen in the area.

Greater Woodrush

greater woodrush
greater woodrush flowers

Greater woodrush (also known as great wood-rush), Luzula syvatica, is an indicator of dry acid soil.

It has clusters of small rush-like flowers.

It has long white hairs along the edges of its shiny leaves, a feature of woodrushes that you don’t see in grasses, sedges or rushes.

woodrush leaves

Bluebell

As I walk through a drift of bluebells, Hyacinthoides non-scripta, at the top end of the valley I get a waft of hyacinth scent, but nowhere near as pungent as the wild garlic.

Wood Speedwell

wood speedwell
wood speedwell

Wood speedwell, Veronica montana, straggles over a mossy log by a woodland track. It’s a plant of moist, neutral soils, often found in ancient woodland.

Staghorn Sumac

The most conspicuous butterflies at the moment: fresh-looking red admirals.

Next door’s staghorn sumac might be falling to pieces as it sheds its reddening compound leaves but the birds appreciate it. A party of blue tits and great tits forage every niche on its bark and branches, while a small warbler, tagging along with them, checks out the lower branches. Starlings fly in to eat the small berries, botanically drupes.

wasp nest

In local parkland, this wasps’ nest at the foot of an oak has been raided, presumably by a badger. You can see the remaining wasps clustered on the remnants of the nest.

conker
squirrel

We’re used to seeing the grey squirrels burying acorns and collecting sweet chestnuts but this autumn they’re showing a lot of interest in conkers. Just after I’d photographed this nibbled shell, a squirrel bounded across the path with a large conker in its mouth and headed into the cover of a holly.

Dawn by Calor-gas-light

dawn
An attempt to show dawn, painted by calor-gas-light.

Monday 30/Tuesday 31 July, 1973, RSPB Loch Garten: Monday was a good night for night watch. The Moon went down behind Craigowrie, Jupiter shone over Torr Hill and Mars came up red behind the eyrie. When it became really dark at midnight there were about 5 times as many stars out as I’d see on a good night at home . . . the Milky Way a streak above the eyrie running right through the W of Cassiopeia. The Pleiades, thousand of them, blue in binoculars came up left of tree.

The dramatic dawn, blinding bright when the sun got up behind the eyrie and shone directly into the hide.

Torr Hill

lorry, Torr Hill

Thursday 9th August 1973, from my Osprey Camp, Loch Garten, sketchbook: What a wind; swaying the forest pines, bending over the birches on the moor, breaking up the bank of cloud coming up the valley. There was white water on the gullery and grey breakers on Garten when I got round. I walked on shore getting sprayed.

‘They’ll moulder away and be like other loam.’ said Edwin Muir in his poem ‘The Horses’. This lorry was mouldering away on Torr Hill.

Batman Hoverfly on Hogweed

hoverfly sketches

Batman Hoverfly, Myathropa florea, on hogweed in a clearing below Staindale Lake, Dalby Forest, North Yorks Moors. It is supposed to have a Batman logo-shaped marked on the rear of the thorax, but individuals can be variable.

The larvae of this hoverfly are ‘rat-tailed maggots’ living in wet hollows in woodland, although they’ll make use of buckets and plastic containers.

hoverfly

The Wood Wide Web

Happy birthday to Ben. And I’m glad to report that Superfast Fibre is scheduled to be rolled out to our neck of the woods in June.