Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Teddy is a puggle – a cross between a pug and a beagle – which, according to his minder (his owners are away on holiday), means that he always looks slightly bad tempered. On the contrary, he keeps his cool when a passing border collie challenges him with a barrage of barking, looking the over excited passer by as he was thinking just what is the matter with you.
Drawing the dogs and trying the s’mores kronut, a cross between a croissant and a donut, at the ØL cafe in Horbury this morning.
The dogs took so much interest in their surroundings that they soon wound their leads around table legs and chair legs.
Simba is a dog, a sheltie, who needs constant reassurance but that’s not surprising as he has to share his home territory with two year-old Alex, who celebrates his birthday today.
I’ve drawn Simba in my pocket-sized Moleskine, using my new Lamy Safari with the extra fine nib.
AT THE BEGINNING of last month we saw a group of five Redshanks perching on the rocks at Marine Drive, Scarborough, preening as they waited for the tide to go out. They were a bit too distant to draw but I photographed them with my 30x zoom, resting it on the concrete top of the sea wall.
Writing in British Birds in 1952, G Warburg described some remarkable communal behaviour in breeding Redshanks when dogs and, once, an otter, Lutra lutra, approached;
‘up to 20 packed close round intruding mammal, following it carefully with bowing and bobbing movements (in the case if L. lutra, silently) when dog ran, birds hovered overhead, giving Chip-calls.’
Warbury 1952 and Grosskopf 1959, quoted in Birds of the Western Palaearctic, 1983