Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
As I weeded the path behind the raised bed, one of the garden snail shells I spotted this morning was smashed, probably by a thrush; another was occupied, so I popped it into a crevice and a third was empty, a good subject to try out some Procreate illustration techniques on as I get back into my course.
I always slip my Olympus Tough camera into my pocket when I set out to work in the garden and, even before I’d started repotting plants in the greenhouse, I noticed these zig-zag patterns on the seed tray I was using.
They look like the marks left by a snail scraping away a film of algae from the surface of the tray.
Probably one of the garden snails that I’ve evicted from the greenhouse on several occasions.
Note: Slimer & Shelley have now been relocated to the other side of the hedge, following their night raid on the climbing French beans.
There was plenty of action on the duck pond in Thornes Park this morning but these two mallard/farmyard drakes were a more appealing subject, dozing in the sun amongst the ferny cow parsley by a woodland path.
We’ve been in a high pressure area for a while now, which means sunny days but cold nights. So far our tomato plants in the greenhouse had survived unscathed but an extra heavy frost last night has shrivelled most of them. There’s still time to plant replacements.
Barbara’s birthday today and last year, still under the first lockdown, the highlight of the day was a click-and-collect visit to a supermarket, the furthest we had been since our previous click-and-collect. This year we can entertain a limited number of guests in our garden.
Yesterday, after taking out a few weeds, I swept sand into the cracks between the paving slabs by the front door. Already this morning, there are signs of activity. Could these be tracks left by an insect? Or a woodlouse?
Something has been active in the corner. I didn’t notice this tiny snail shell until I spotted in the photograph. It might have been dislodged from a crevice yesterday but I suspect that it’s been introduced along with the sand.
The sand is from Denmark. The grains are small, mostly less than a millimetre, and well-rounded, so perhaps this is windblown sand from a former dune system. Denmark has extensive dunes along its western, North Sea, coast and, further inland, extensive areas of glacial sand and gravel.
In my photograph, the glassy grains are quartz and I think that the larger, fleshy-looking ochre fragments are feldspar.
The seven species that I disturbed as I weeded around the paving stones yesterday come from seven different families, four classes and three phyla, so, within inches of our front door, we have an annelid worm, a gastropod mollusc, an isopod crustacean and a social insect.
I disturbed a large ant as I swept the driveway, which I guessed was a queen. The queen disposes of her wings after her nuptial flight, then sets about finding a suitable site – such as here under the paving stones – to start her colony.
Coincidentally, later, a few yards away, I spotted a worker ant carrying a single transparent wing, which looked like one that had been discarded by a queen.
| Common Name | Family or Order | Class or Subphylum | Phylum |
| Earthworm | Lumbricidae | Clitellata | Annelida |
| Garden Snail, Helix aspersa | Helicidae | Gastropoda | Mollusca |
| Keelbacked Slug | Limacidae | Gastropoda | Mollusca |
| Woodlouse | Isopoda | Crustacea | Mollusca |
| Shield Bug | Hemiptera | Insecta | Arthropoda |
| Rove Beetle | Staphylinidae | Insecta | Arthropoda |
| Ant | Formicidae | Insecta | Arthropoda |
Apart from the squirrel-nibbled cone, which is from Nostell, I picked up these seeds and the lichen and the snail shell on a mossy tree-fringed lawn in Ossett.
Some of the sycamore seeds had begun to sprout while all that was left of the lime seed was the pair of wings that propelled it through the air.
The lichen, Xanthoria parietina, would normally be yellow but it turns greenish when it grows in shade. The insides of the spore-producing cups – the apothecia – have kept their colour.
During the rain garden snails have climbed onto our front door. I relocate eight of them by tossing them across the garden into the corner by the beech hedge.
One of the favourite hang outs for snails and for large brown slugs is under the wheelie bins. Once a week when we put the bins out, they have to find alternative cover but we usually put out the bins in the evening, giving them the cool of the night to slither for safety.
The RHS recommended ‘good for pollinators’ collection of bulbs is living up to its name; the allium flowers are attracting small bumblebees even in the rain. It helps that the flowers hang downwards.
The chives in the herb bed are covered in purple pom-poms of flower and these are attracting red-tailed bumble bees.
Ants are excavating beneath the paving slabs on the drive and the patio. Charles Darwin made observations to calculate how long it would take earthworms, leaving worm casts on his lawn, to bury a stone that he had left there. The ants are gradually undermining the paving stones and probably some day we’re going to have to relay them.
The poplar leaves by the lock on the Leeds Liverpool canal at Gargrave have all but turned to leaf mould, leaving fragmentary leaf skeletons.
On a south-facing bank by the road I see my first celandines of the year bursting into flower, pushing up amongst their dark green heart-shaped leaves and the dried stems of last year’s growth.
At the foot of this gritstone wall I pick up a couple of garden snail shells to draw. Inside a third shell I find another species of snail sheltering. Compared to the garden snail this one has a more flattened spiral, rather like an ammonite.
The Garden Snail, Helix aspersa, has a thin, lightweight shell but that still looks cumbersome as it explores a fern-filled crevice in an old wall (see previous posts). As I drew it from a photograph that I’d taken this morning I noticed traces of damage to the shell with what appears to be a healed break in the rim and hairline fracture on the ‘back’ of its shell.
I imagine it being surprised, perhaps by a bird, retracting into its shell then falling from the wall onto the pavement below.
A second snail clung precariously to the base of the stems of Common Ragwort, growing from a crevice near the top of the six foot high wall amongst the fronds of Rusty-back Fern and Wall Rue.