Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
A mallard – possibly a youngster as it seems to be in the process of growing secondary wing feathers for the first time – standing at the cascading outlet of Newmillerdam lake this morning.
Meanwhile this adult female and her mate were paddling alongside the Boathouse Cafe.
More bird anatomy studies from photographs in the Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness Guides Bird and Skeleton.
The Canada geese are from a photograph in The Encyclopedia of Birds by Perrins and Middleton.
This is from an illustration in the 1969 AA Reader’s Digest Book of British Birds, artist unknown: eight artists worked on the project but illustrations aren’t credited individually.
Black-headed gull, moorhen, mallard and Canada goose at Thornes Park duck pond this morning.
A drake mallard stood resting by the duck pond in Thornes Park this morning. This was the only bird that didn’t move much during the whole time that I was there but I still found it difficult to draw get the correct proportion of head to body. With each drawing I started with the head but by the time I’d drawn the body I’d find myself coming back to redraw the head.
I couldn’t resist adding colour, which immediately made my sketches more mallard-like.
I drew birds in our back garden in the afternoon and, as with the mallard, added colour to each one as I went along.
The stock dove was an unusual visitor, smaller than the wood pigeon but quite capable of chasing it off, reaching out as if threatening to peck it. By the time they’d got down to the edge of the pond the wood pigeon gave up and flew away, leaving the stock dove to return to foraging beneath the bird feeders.
Feeling a bit more springlike at Newmillerdam this morning.
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.
I’ve been looking for the average scruffy duck: an adult in eclipse, a juvenile moulting into adult plumage or a part-domestic duck. I’ve taken the colours from two ducks that I photographed by the war memorial at Newmillerdam last week.
Take a 90-second break with elegant gulls, dabbling coots, preening ducks and a hesitant pigeon on a quiet backwater near the Boathouse at Newmillerdam Country Park, Wakefield, West Yorkshire.
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 went for the great wildlife spectacles of spring migration and nest-building for twins Connie and Annabel, who live alongside the flood meadows of the River Trent.
I found myself thinking, if Ikea ever broke into the wildlife market . . .