Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
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?
Rather than sit at the computer dubbing in the lines of each character in my Ode to a Duck, I set up a makeshift recording studio and Barbara and I each read through the whole poem, with just a few out-takes. As I’m taller than Barbara, I moved the drawing board up to the next shelf for my read-through.
I thought that it would sound better if we stood up, rather than record it sitting in my office chair. To cut down on any slight reverb we might get from the bare studio wall behind us, I hung a blanket over a clothes horse on top of the plan chest. The wall of books absorbed any reverberation from behind the microphones, which, by the way are iRig Lavoisier (snapped up in the sale when Maplins was closing down a couple of years ago).
In Adobe Audition, I cut and pasted each rhyming couplet, then used that for each of the characters in the film, Barbara and I reading alternate couplets.
After all the trouble that I’d gone to to avoid reverb, I added an echo effect to the grim warning given by the Pike and Perch in the penultimate verse.
Ode to a Duck on YouTube
10.15 am, sunny, slight breeze: A heron is patiently watching and stalking in the shallows by an old coot’s nest near the outlet of Newmillerdam Lake. This is an immature bird; it has moulted out of its brown juvenile plumage but still has a shade of grey on its neck. It has yet to grow its crest into the breeding adult’s pigtails.
But it’s successful with its watch, bend neck and lightning-fast stab technique of fishing, catching two small fish in the space of 5 or 10 minutes. The second fish seems to me to be rather squat, and I wondered if it might be a bullhead.
By the time that I move over to the Canada geese, gathering around someone feeding them near the main car park, my pen has stopped running freely, perhaps because there’s a bit of grease on my sketchbook page or the ink is running low. I bend down from the fishing platform and dabble the nib in the water. I like the transparent effect it gives to my drawing.
The tufted duck is so buoyant that it needs a little burst of power to push itself below the surface. It looks to me as if almost the whole duck jumps out of the water before diving sharply in headfirst, with legs ready to act as paddles to propel it deeper.
10.52 am, Newmillerdam near main car park, sunny slight breeze: There’s a commotion amongst the black-headed gulls and a boisterous flock of 20 or 30 of them swoop and tumble over towards me from the outlet corner of the lake. At first I think that someone must be feeding the ducks and they’re falling out, as they do, over a snatched crust.
Then I notice that the pale brown ‘crust’ is moving about on its own account. My first thought is that for some reason the gulls have ganged up on a sparrow, but the manoeuvrability is un-sparrowlike and I wonder for a moment if it could be a late swallow or martin.
One of the gulls briefly captures it and it’s not until it escapes that I can see that it’s a small bat. It dodges around then escapes into the lakeside willows where the gulls can’t follow it and the gulls head off back towards the outlet.
At last, the world premier of my cartoon inspired by the ducks, swans, geese, squirrels and monster pike seen on our Monday morning walks around Newmillerdam.
Hapee Burfday to Jo.
We were lucky with the weather for our midweek break on the coast, although at windswept Staple Newk at RSPB Bempton Cliffs, I made sure that I clung tight to my sketchbook as I drew this gannet calling and spreading its wings at the top of the cliff, just yards below the viewing platform.
The ring-tailed lemurs at Sewerby Hall were eating the green leaves from bundles of freshly-cut bamboo. One perched, sitting upright, on a log and spread its arms to soak up the sun.
The llamas were also looking relaxed. This one, sitting munching with its companions in its paddock barely opened its eyes as I drew it.
The Humboldt penguins were more active, swimming around in their pool, twisting around to preen and scratch themselves.
After a few minutes they started making their way out of the pond, heading for a spot in the sun to dry off. Amongst them, Pickle (bottom left), still in her plain grey juvenile plumage. After initial enthusiasm, parents Sigsby and Twinny had started to neglect their incubation duties so the egg was transferred to an incubator and Pickle was hand-reared by head keeper John Pickering and his wife Tracey.
New Humboldt Penguin chick arrives at Sewerby Hall and Gardens
I promise this is the final instalment in my vegetable trilogy: vine-ripened tomatoes. And these were supermarket grown, although I’m hoping we’ll still have some ripening in the greenhouse into next month.
Back to the veg rack for my subject today, red peppers. I did try growing them this year but in our unheated greenhouse they never ripened and we ate them green.