Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
I’m saying with flowers for Sofia, who becomes a teenager today.
Flower number three is a bit of a tribute to Burt Lahr, the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz:
I’m afraid there’s no denying
I’m just a dandy lion,
A fate I don’t deserveBut I could show my prowess
Yip Harburg (lyrics), ‘If I only had the Nerve’, ‘The Wizard of Oz’
Be a lion, not a mouse
If I only had the nerve.
My peppers are more than ready for potting on but I wanted to draw this Sun Spurge, Euphorbia helioscopia, now going to seed, before I do that. I took the soil for the peppers from the greenhouse, so it’s not surprising that this sprouted. Spurge ‘bribes’ ants to disperse its seed by tempting them with oil-rich attachments – elaiosomes – which the ants or their larvae eat before discarding the seed.
Like all euphorbias, as a deterrent to herbivores, the Sun Spurge has milky, latex sap that can cause irritation.
Newmillerdam Lake, War Memorial, Monday, 24 May, 2021, 10.50 a.m., 63℉, 7℃, 80% cloud: A coot swims to the shore and immediately sees off two snoozing mallard drakes. It preens and pods about a bit then goes back to the lake.
Two pairs of pink-footed goose come ashore, each with a single gosling.
Two weeks ago I drew the coot on the nest by the outlet sitting on eggs, last week there were about eight chicks and this week the nest is empty, with no sign of any addled eggs left behind. Nearer the war memorial there’s a coot still sitting on its nest, no sign of chicks peeping out as we passed.
I’d forgotten that in my last year at Junior School, I’d produced this Cecil B. de Mille inspired version of The Book of Exodus.
Growing up in a then rather grimy pre-smokeless zone little town, with our regular entertainment provided by a 12 inch Bush black and white 405 line television, it’s hard to exaggerate the impact that seeing Biblical epics like The Ten Commandments had on me.
This is not the ideal way to grow peppers. I took some seed from a red pepper in early spring, dried it, then planted it in garden soil from the greenhouse. First to germinate were garden weeds, mainly chickweed but also red deadnettle, spurge and what I think is nipplewort.
The pepper seedlings are now looking yellow and undernourished, so it’s time for me to pot them on and give them a chance to grow, flower and fruit.
Newmillerdam, 10.55 a.m., 100% cloud, 7℃, 45℉, rain: Three mallard drakes are soon chased away by the second, non-brooding bird, which soon returns to feed the chicks. Unfortunately the nest platform is festooned with soggy white bread but the young are also getting natural food as the second bird dives nearby, which is more popular than the gloopy, soggy bread.
From 10 or 12 feet away, I can’t see the flanges that are already starting to develop along the toes of the coot chicks’ feet. Three of the chicks are noticeably larger than the others and already coming out for a brief swim around the nest. The smaller chicks stay under the brooding bird.
When it comes on to rain all the chicks somehow find room in the nest, one of them just poking its head out from the shelter of ‘mum’s’ (I’m guessing it’s mum) wing and getting fed when the other adult swims in with the odd morsel of food. I can’t tell what the food is but one bit looked a bit wispy as if it was waterweed.
You could describe it as biological erosion: a few weeks ago I noticed a small group of house sparrows ‘gritting’ on an old sandstone wall in Horbury.
The sand grains are used in the bird’s gizzard to help grind down the seeds and grain that form its staple diet. Sparrows will also peck at mortar on walls, which gives them an extra mineral, calcium carbonate, in the cement.
Like other aspects of sparrow life – such as feeding, drinking, dust bathing and courtship – this is an opportunity for a bit of a social gathering and the inevitable chirruping dispute.
I thought that I’d give my laidback lepidopterist friend Roger a bit of a challenge with his birthday card this year. This is going to be difficult if you’re not familiar with British butterflies, so answers at the foot of this post.
And if that isn’t enough here are four bonus species – all different species of a group of small butterflies that hold their forewings at an angle above their hindwings, so they look a bit moth-like.
Top cartoon, back row, left to right: Red Admiral, Purple Hairstreak, Painted Lady
Front row: Small Tortoiseshell, Purple Emperor, Comma, Small Copper
Bonus species, left to right: Large Skipper, Small Skipper, Dingy Skipper, Essex Skipper (and yes, as Roger pointed out, Dagenham is no longer in Essex, it became a part of Greater London in 1965!)
I didn’t get around to including the Chequered Skipper, shame about that.
Even at the lowest magnification of 10x, you can see the cells in this chickweed leaf, which is just one centimetre from base to tip.
Zooming in to 60x you can see how the cells line up to make structures, along the vein and the edge of the leaf.
At 200x there’s isn’t much depth of field but it looks to me as if there’s a single line of cells forming a tube along the edge of the leaf.
These were taken on a Traveler USB microscope, which I bought in 2009 at Aldi’s. The software that came with it is long out of date, so it’s taken a bit of ingenuity by my computer expert friend Martin to find a workaround to get it working on my iMac, via a virtual Windows 10 installation.
Under the Microscope my Wild West Yorkshire nature diary for 20 September 2009.
We had so many nights of frost last month that we’re leaving it until the last possible moment to plant our runner beans. Having lost tomatoes to the frost down in the greenhouse, we’re keeping these on the kitchen windowsill, just in case. They’re visibly growing every day.
