Category: Woodland

Bilberry Wood: The Movie #1

Freeform Project Panel, Premier Pro
Tough TG-4

On our last visit to the Dales, I walked around Bilberry Wood in Langstrothdale, using my Olympus Tough TG-4 to take short movie shots of every plant and fungus that I found. So how am I going to put those 42 random shots together to make a coherent two-minute film?

The Freeform Project Panel in Adobe Premier Pro is proving useful: I can drag and drop thumbnails of the clips around the screen, so I’m arranging them in groups, such as habitats, flowers and mosses. Once I’ve got them in a suitable order they can go straight on to the Editing window and I can add titles and a commentary.

I’ve already scrolled through each clip and selected the best few seconds of each one, by adding an ‘In’ and an ‘Out’ point to each clip, so there shouldn’t be any redundant or out-of-focus footage in my first rough cut of the movie.

Bilberry Wood

Wether Fell
Wether Fell, seen from the causey stone path behind the Wensleydale Creamery. Gayle Beck at the foot of the slope in the foreground. A Roman road runs along the top of the fell.

I’m reading David Joy’s 2019 book Discover Your Woods, Trees in the Dales so this afternoon I had a walk around Bilberry Wood here as Nethergill Farm. There are pines, larches and firs but the only broadleaved species that I notice is rowan.

birch
Birch, Goat Gap Cafe, Newby, 4/9/20

Rushes and sphagnum moss grow in the damper areas, with heather and polytrichum mosses on drier hummocks.

At the more exposed western corner of the wood, a swathe of pines has been flattened, the fallen trees revealing that they were shallow rooted.

The only bird that I notice is a wren, flitting about amongst the ground vegetation and it appears that a wren spotted my iPhone which I’d set to take a time-lapse sequence, flashing on the screen for a single frame.

Bumblebee on Devil’s-Bit Scabious

There are ferns, bracken and a few brambles but the ground layer consists predominantly of various kinds of mosses. Tormentil straggles around, dotting the ground with its four-petalled yellow flowers.

stile
Squeeze stile on the causey stone path, between Gayle and Hawes church.

There are a few fungi and, as the name of the wood suggests, plenty of bilberry.

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Categorized as Woodland

Down-looker Snipe-fly

Snipe-fly

This Down-looker Snipe-fly, Rhagio scolopacea, was keeping watch from a fence-post at the edge of the parkland alongside Top Park Wood, Nostell, in May last year. It habitually rests facing downwards and it will dart off on short flights, like a snipe.

This was probably a male defending a territory as it waited for a female to appear but this common species of snipe-fly has occasionally been recorded snatching insects in mid-air. The larvae are predators, feeding on small earthworms and insects in leaf litter and in decaying wood.

Despite its impressive appearance, it is harmless to humans.

The Wood in Winter

Coxley Wood

The day started with a frost but by lunchtime that had melted away as a warm front came through, although it didn’t turn mild enough to melt the ice on the pond.

As a change from the iPad, I’ve gone back to a real sketchbook, a Pink Pig with their own brand of 270 gsm watercolour paper, Ameleie. Also as a change, I’ve gone for a fibre tip, a 0.1 Pilot Drawing Pen in brown, and my larger studio set of Winsor & Newton Professional Watercolours.

There’s been a good variety of birds coming to the feeders this afternoon including long-tailed tits, nuthatch and two pairs of blue tits which seem ready to start falling out over the nestbox. We recently replaced the old blue tit nesting box with a sparrow nestbox, which is designed for three pairs to nest in. I can’t see the blue tits ever settling down in adjacent nestboxes, so my guess is that eventually the house sparrows will take an interest and move in.

Cuckoo’s Nest Halt

Blacker Wood

Last April, after a winter that had lingered on and on, we were keen to get out as soon as the spring blossom started to appear. A friend, Philippa Coultish, was taking us around her local patch: the valley of Park Gate Dike, northeast of Skelmanthorpe. Because of the ‘Beast from the East’ snowstorms, we were a bit early for the flowers we’d planned to see in Blacker Wood.

Denby Dale Walks

On our way back towards the town, we walked parallel with the Kirklees Light Railway and watched one of the narrow gauge steam trains make a stop up at Cuckoo’s Nest Halt. I’ve yet to take a trip on the railway but hope we can return to walk from station to station alongside the line, then get the train back.

There’s an excellent pack of leaflets, Walking in and around Denby Dale with fourteen walks, centred on Denby Dale, Skelmanthorpe, Clayton West and Emley.

Link

Denby Dale Walkers are Welcome leaflets, available as PDFs.

New Bench

Larch bench

There’s a new bench at Newmillerdam Country Park by the bridge at the top end of the lake.

“Is it home grown?”, I ask the men who’ve assembled it.
“Yes, it was grown here.”
“What sort of timber did you go for?”
“It’s larch: larch lasts longer.”

Newmillerdam, 1973.
Causeway and top end of lake, Newmillerdam, September 1973, Agfacolor slide taken by Richard Brook. The lake is now entirely surrounded by woodland.

The conifers here were planted for use as pit props. Who would have thought at the time they were planted in the 1970s that, by the time they were mature, deep mining and opencast mining would have disappeared from the Wakefield area.

Kingfishers

Newmillerdam woods

On our walk around Newmillerdam Lake this morning, it’s good to see the sun  breaking through after so many gloomy, misty November days, especially as we get a brief glimpse of two kingfishers flying along the edge of the lake, apparently engaged in a bit of a dogfight, one swooping at the other. One (or possibly both of them, it all happens so quickly) heads out across the lake to the far side, where the drain enters the lake. We’re told that the drain is the place that you’re most likely to see them.

I see the sapphire blue on one of the bird’s backs and Barbara also spots the orange of its breast as it flies by.

Ducks and Drakes

mallards

A month from today – Boxing Day – the days will be getting longer. Drake mallards are already cruising around in noisy groups, displaying to females but they won’t start nesting until March.

coot

One of the coots on the lake was cruising along calling – a sound which reminds me of a hooter on a child’s pedal car.

cattle

From our table in the cafe at Blacker Hall Farm, I can see the cattle grazing, a powerful-looking bull standing calmly amongst them.

November Woods

View from Blacker Hall

I always go for the table by the French windows when we call for coffee, and in my case a date scone, at Blacker Hall Farm Shop cafe. The original of this sketch is 2.5 inches, 6 cm, across.

Newmillerdam woods

A few weeks ago we were commenting on how few goosanders we were seeing at Newmillerdam, but today there are twenty or thirty in loose groups scattered across the open water and the reedy narrow section.

 

Langsett in October

Langsett woods

binoculars
Original size of drawing: 1.8 inches, 4.5 cm across.

So good to be back at Langsett, walking around the reservoir, across the more and back up through the woods where larch and beech are now in their autumn colours.

 

Common Earthball

Earthball

Common Earthball, Scleroderma citrinum, has ‘a characteristic smell of old rubber’ according to Wildlife of Britain, the Definitive Visual Guide or strong odour ‘of gas or acetylene’ (Encyclopedia of Fungi, Michael Jordan). As I’ve mentioned before, this didn’t stop me from slicing the young ones, with firm white flesh, and frying them in a bit of butter when I was trying to survive on a very slender travelling scholarship on a student field trip to Iceland. To me, they tasted of mushroom, but I don’t recommend that you try them, as they’re variously described as inedible or even poisonous.

earthballThese were growing by the path in deciduous woodland at the top end of the Pleasure Grounds at Nostell Priory Park.

Link

National Trust, Nostell