Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
I decided that I needed a little sequence of sketches of the pheasants fighting, this is them squaring up to each other.
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.
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.
I’ve added watercolour to the acorns that I drew earlier this month.
Fungi at Harlow Carr this morning included common puffball and a large bracket growing on beech.
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.
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.
On a fallen trunk, this fungus is sprouting from a crevice, perhaps a species of Mycena?
This children’s book, first published in 1987 by Heinemann, was inspired by us moving down to Coxley Valley a few years earlier.
At this time of year, the wood and meadow have taken on the early autumnal look that sets the mood for the story, such as it is: it’s a walk through the wood looking at the way birds and animals use sight, smell, hearing, touch and taste.
I included butterflies tasting through their feet and bees seeing ultra-violet but my spread of a pipistrelle bat using echo location turned out looking a bit too technical to sit comfortably with the other spreads.
This hoof fungus, Fomes fomentarius, appears to have powdered the roots of the beech it is growing on with a film of rusty spores.
It’s also known as the tinder bracket because it has been used as in fire-starting since prehistoric times.
As I walk into the woods above the Boathouse at Newmillerdam, I feel as if I should be switching a light on. The leaf mosaic – still green – of the tall, straight-trunked beeches cut out so much of the light on what is already a dull and overcast morning. Not surprisingly, it’s this white fungus on a sawn-off stump that catches my eye.
On the pond cam, apart from the usual wood pigeon, the goldfinches have been coming down to drink, one of them fluttering low over the surface before realising that the duckweed isn’t going to be a safe surface to land on.
We feel that we’re getting some of our autumn regulars back at the bird table: a regular nuthatch, a single long-tailed tit and, swooping through at top speed, a large (so probably female) sparrowhawk, which soon went off and put up a flock of goldfinches which were probably feeding on thistle seeds in the meadow.
The dappled markings of the speckled wood, resting on a bramble leaf, echo the dappled sunlight in the welcome shade of The Pinewoods, as we walk up from the Valley Gardens, Harrogate, on the hottest day since July.