Addingford in May

The Calder Valley at Addingford, down Addingford Steps from Horbury, is looking at its best now with hawthorn and cow parsley in flower.

I was intrigued by the old building in Fearnside’s Yard (now renamed Fearnside’s Close) off Horbury High Street. There’s no trace that it was ever half-timbered but it looks very old to me. Those rows of through-stones make me wonder if it was originally faced with stone too.

I got a chance to re-photograph the boy’s entrance to the Wesleyan Day School on School Lane, opposite Fearnside’s Yard on the south side the High Street. When I photographed it for William Baines’ centenary in November there was a skip in front of the window (previously the door for the boys’ entrance).

A new route for the footpath was recently excavated alongside the mineral railway. The embankment’s shale, sandstone and occasional lumps of coal, has been exposed. This kind of debris was once a common sight on colliery spoil heaps and there was always the chance that you might spot a fossil plant such as the bark of a giant clubmoss or horsetail, a reminder of the lush forests that grew here – when this part of the Earth’s crust was close to the equator – 300 million years ago.

Link

The Gaskell School, more about the Wesleyan Day School and William Baines

May Blossom

THE FIRST Hawthorn in blossom is a bush overhanging the railway cutting at the foot of Addingford Steps. It gets the warmth from the south-facing brick embankment below.

The hawthorn blossom has a sweet smell, I wouldn’t call it a ‘heady’ smell; it’s not an over-the-top sweetness nor is it sugary sweet like sherbet it’s just, um, sweetish.

Each flower has five petals, which is not surprising because Hawthorn is a member of the rose family, Rosaceae. There’s one female pistil in the middle surrounded by a number of male stamens, each with a reddish tip. When you see the haws, the hawthorn berries, later in the year, the petals and stamens have withered away but you can still see the remnant of the pistil at the end of the berry.

Botanically the haw is a true berry, even though it might seem too pulpy and woody to qualify as what we’d expect if we bought a ‘mixed berries’ yogurt. From a botanical perspective raspberries and blackberries aren’t berries, they’re collections of drupes; fleshy, thin-skinned fruits containing the seed in a stone. Smaller versions of single drupe fruits such as the cherry, plum and olive.

Ra-cha-cha-chat

What bird sings from a bush by the canal, opposite a flooded marshy field known as the Strands, in what I’ve described in my field notes as an ‘agitated chattering, rasping, stoccato, occasional morse code phrases’?

Like smells, bird song is difficult to describe in words!

Sunday was International Dawn Chorus day. At this time of year you get the full variety of the dawn chorus as the summer migrants have joined our resident birds. I’m no expert on bird song but at least having got out a bit this spring I’m familiar enough with our residents to spot a new and noticeably different song.

 Crab Apple blossom at the Strands last week

This song is one that I’ve heard down by this marshy field before and I know that it’s either Reed or Sedge Warbler. I always forget which one by the time it appears next year. I didn’t manage to focus my binoculars on it but thought that I glimpsed it singing inconspicuously from halfway up in the bush.

The RSPB website (see link below) describes the song of the Sedge Warbler as ‘a noisy, rambling warble compared to the more rhythmic song of the reed warbler’. Reed Warblers are, anyway, as the name suggests, more typical of areas with large reedbeds. You’ll find Sedge Warblers in reedbeds too but also at damp wetlands like the Strands, where you’re less likely to find the Reed Warbler.

Link; The Sedge Warbler page on the RSPB website helpfully includes a recording of the song.