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.

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.

Heathers

Making a start on the flowers of Bilberry Wood. Heather grows in tussocks on drier ground, cross-leaved heath in damper places.

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Categorized as Woodland

Scots Pine

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.

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 Buzzard on its Rounds

buzzard over the wood sketches

4.10 pm: A kestrel hover over the meadow and dives as if it’s about to make a kill but abandons the dive at tree-top height and flies off over the neighbour’s garden.

sketchbook page, birds of prey and Coxley Wood.

The buzzard was doing its rounds over back gardens and the meadow at breakfast-time this morning and it’s back again as the light fades, just thirty feet above me, as I sit at my desk by the skylight studio window.