Category: Woodland

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.

Pheasant Duel #2

pheasants fighting

I decided that I needed a little sequence of sketches of the pheasants fighting, this is them squaring up to each other.

pheasants fighting

They circled, trying to outflank each other then they’d both leap up, sometimes striking out with their feet like a pair of heraldic beasts, then coming back low to the ground.

Pheasant Duel

pheasants fighting

Back in January, we watched these cock pheasants squaring up to each other in Coxley on a slope in Sun Wood between the upper and lower dams. It started like a Sumo contest with the rivals bowing as low as possible but simultaneously fluffing out their feathers to look intimidating, all the time nodding menacingly and occasionally making a rapier-like thrust with the beak at the opponent’s throat.

This would bubble up into sparring a foot or two from the ground. Considering how vocal male pheasants can be, there was surprisingly little grockling to accompany the bluster, just a short call as they came back down to the ground.

Acorns

acorns

I’ve added watercolour to the acorns that I drew earlier this month.

Autumn Fungi

Fungi at Harlow Carr this morning included common puffball and a large bracket growing on beech.

Lunchtime sketches.

Acorns

acorns

Last year was an exceptional one for acorns, at the top end of the wood in places it was like walking on a gravel path. This year it looks as if they’ll be in short supply. That shouldn’t be much of a problem for the grey squirrels at Nostell, who are making the most of what appears to be a good crop of sweet chestnuts this year.

Stump Fungus

sweet chestnut bark

There’s a sweet, moist, earthy smell of autumn in the woodland around the Lower Lake at Nostell Priory this morning. The bark of the old sweet chestnuts here reminds me of Arthur Rackham fairy tale illustrations.

stump fungus

On a fallen trunk, this fungus is sprouting from a crevice, perhaps a species of Mycena?