Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Bee orchid, date palm and the laburnum arch at Brodsworth Hall this morning.
Thanks to the English Heritage garden staff for pointing out the bee orchid which were growing on a south-facing grassy bank, left un-mown, alongside the formal beds and lawns.
The date palm grows in the shelter of the sunken gardens, at the sunnier end.
We take a walk around the Woolley Colliery site on our Wakefield Naturalists’ Society midsummer field excursion. I remember this being a grey spoil heap in the 1980s but it’s now fully restored. Hundreds of orchids are in flower on the grassy slope including plenty of bee orchids, a species which I don’t remember having seen before.
Amongst the grasses a spider has spun a large funnel-web. It was lying in wait in the centre but I didn’t manage to show it in my photograph.
We decided that most of the orchids here were common spotted, with a few paler, taller flower spikes that might be hybrids.
Willow warblers and chiff chaffs were singing at the scrubby edges of the meadow area while down at a rush-fringed lagoon a reed warbler was enthusiastically going through its varied guttural performance.
There were plenty of toad tadpoles, many of them sprouting their first pair of legs, congregating near a drainage pipe at the sunny edge of the lagoon.