The woodland walk at RHS Harlow Carr this afternoon.
Woodland Walk
Category: Woodland
Nuthatch Nest
We watch a pair of nuthatches feeding their chicks in a nest hole high up in a willow. They arrive with food every five or ten minutes and usually collect a faecal sack which they swoop down amongst the shrubs away from the nest to dispose of.
The female is noticeably lighter and more silver grey than the male which has a slate grey back. At one stage, after looking into the hole briefly, she pauses motionless on the right hand edge of the tree near the hole, facing downwards, with an item of food (perhaps a. It turns out that the male was in the nest hole and when he pops out a minute or two later with a faecal sack in his beak, she goes in.
Our friends John and Heather Gardner have been following progress on this nest watching the parent birds carefully blocking the natural cavity in the willow with beakfuls of mud. At this stage of a the process as soon as the nuthatches left the tree a blue tit would fly in the to investigate the hole. The nuthatches have seen off the competition.
Nuthatches nested in the same cavity last year but the mud barrier needed replacing after the winter.
Above the nest hole a hoof fungus projects like a canopy over a door.
Wood Anemones
Hoof fungus, also known as tinder bracket, Fomes fomentarius, on silver birch and wood anemones at Newmillerdam this morning. I headed via the Arboretum, through Kings Wood, down into the Lawns Dike valley and up through Bullcliff Wood to the top end of the lake.
Birch Bracket
Birch bracket fungus at Newmillerdam this morning.
Micro Forest
A micro-hike around the arboretum and conifer plantations at Newmillerdam this morning. I got a surprise when I saw a tiny invertebrate trundling by as I focussed on algae on a tree trunk. I couldn’t see it at all with the naked eye but it no doubt ran for cover from the glaring light of the eight LEDs of my mobile microscope.
Squirrel Feeding Box
This red squirrel at a feeding box and small sketch of tormentil should finish off my Bilberry Wood double-page spread.
Heathers
Making a start on the flowers of Bilberry Wood. Heather grows in tussocks on drier ground, cross-leaved heath in damper places.
Scots Pine
Drawing this Scots Pine for my Bilberry Wood article makes me realise that I’d love to make a return visit to Speyside. My summer and Easter breaks as a volunteer warden at the RSPB osprey reserve at Loch Garten were where I really got into the sketchbook habit.
It was a contrast to the rest of the year at art college, latterly in London but I feel that I learnt as much wandering around the Caledonian pine forest with my sketchbook as I did back in the studio in South Kensington.
Archer Hill
As we walked across the deer park at Wentworth Castle, two fallow bucks looked up then decided we were harmless and went on grazing as we passed them. The does and fawns were more wary. One made a show by ‘stotting’: prancing off stiff-legged, alternately putting the two front legs, then the two back legs down. This behaviour is thought to be a signal to predators that the deer is so fit, with its fancy footwork, that it won’t be worth the trouble of attempting to catch it.
Archer Hill Gate (all three arches of it: I’ve framed it with the tree to show only one of them) stands half way up the slope between Wentworth Castle, a Georgian mansion, and the ruins of Stainborough Castle.
A Woodland Diversion
It’s close to freezing so, despite the crisp winter sunshine, I decided not to to sit and sketch at Newmillerdam this morning but headed off to the top end of the wood, pausing only to photograph Gnome Jeff on the diversion through the arboretum.