Tag: Nostell

Landscapes

Dinky van

On location and I’ve brought my trusty 1950 Bedford delivery van with me.

Dinky van

We’re on assignment because I’ve just started Ben Hawkins’ The Complete Beginner’s Photography Course, A Modular System for Success and the park at Nostell Priory is an ideal location to complete the Landscape section, including this attempt at ‘forced perspective’, creating an illusion with a toy car.

Dinky van

It worked better on the lichen encrusted capstones on the old park wall than it did in the sunlit courtyard at the stables because I couldn’t get the camera down far enough to get ‘eye level’ at about the height of the van roof.

The Rule of Thirds

Nostell Park

But there’s more to landscape photography than toy cars – or as Ben suggests we call them ‘the right props’. He starts with the rule of thirds.

dead tree

Then adds a focal point – again, to have most impact, at a junction of thirds.

Lead-in Line

Woodland at Nostell

His next suggestion is to create depth by adding a lead-in line, such as a path or shoreline.

Framing

lake
bridge

And of course you can frame a landscape with an overhanging branch, a tree trunk, a bench or even a Robert Adam bridge.

The only shot that I struggled with for technical reasons was one which showed a still landscape with one element moving and blurred – such as cascading water or windswept grasses.

I need to try again with a tripod and, as a long exposure is needed, on a duller day.

Nostell Priory

Intentional Camera Movement

ICM

This was my attempt at ICM – intentional camera movement – a rowan with plenty of ripe berries. It’s intended to give an impressionist effect.

Male Fern, Knapweed and Teasel

fern, knapweed and teasel sketches

Male fern, knapweed and teasel from behind the pond and the meadow area. As I slowly walked down the garden, five female pheasants kept an eye on me but didn’t walk off under the hedge until I started snipping off a small teasel head in our little ‘meadow’ area.

Lower lake

It’s good to see the cascade between the Middle and Lower Lakes at Nostell in action again after years when the overflow was diverted because of problems with the dam.

Cascade at Nostell

Menagerie

With a possible Victorian werewolves project coming up, I soon got into the delights of the gothic decadence of the Menagerie Gardens at Nostell at the weekend.

This secluded corner beyond the Middle Lake with its gravel path, old holm oak, worn stone lion and gothic zookeeper’s lodge always reminds me of the small park on the hill top, adjacent to the Pope’s Palace in Avignon.

Turkeytail, Trametes versicolor, grew on a felled birch trunk used as path edging on the track at the lower end of the lake.

Rambling with the Nats, 1873

naturalists
Artists impression of Victorian naturalists, drawn on Clip Studio Paint (I’m trying out the Lasso filled-shape tool). It would be wonderful if a photograph of the Nats on a ramble in Victorian times ever turned up.

Wakefield Express- 31 May 1873

WAKEFIELD NATURALISTS’ SOCIETY

On Saturday last the members of this Society had a field-day at Nostell, Ryhill, and Wintersett. It was a beautiful day, and nature decked in her spring garb of ever-varying green, displayed that wonderful freshness with which no other part of the year can vie. After several hours’ enjoyment in the woods and lanes, the party met at the Angler’s Arms, Wintersett, where, after tea, the president (Mr Alderman Wainwright, F.L.S.) took the chair and subsequently named the plants about fifty species which had been collected during the afternoon. – Mr Taylor named the conchological specimens, of which fourteen species were exhibited, and Mr Sims named the geological specimens and made some interesting remarks on the geological formations of the neighbourhood. – Messrs. Parkin and Lumb, whose attention had been chiefly directed during the day’s excursion to the observation of the spring migrants, reported they had seen fifteen species of them, and that they had also noticed a Heron and a pair of Common Gull besporting themselves upon the reservoir. Messrs. Fogg and Heald exhibited the larvae of several species of geometae. Returning by way of Hawe Park, the party arrived back at Wakefield as the evening closed in, after spending a most enjoyable and delightful day.

My thanks to Lesley Taylor for spotting this.

Female Teal

juvenile teal

There were plenty of mallards, gadwall and nine shovelers (three drakes, six females/juveniles) on the Lower Lake at Nostell this morning, but it was this little duck, which didn’t look much bigger than a dabchick, that had us puzzled. It’s a teal, and the conspicuous triangular pattern on its back suggests that this is a female in breeding plumage. Juveniles have dark feathers on the back, with just narrow, lighter margins.

The note I’ve written on my sketch, that the female should always show a speculum, is something we read (or perhaps misread) on the Internet, but it’s incorrect according to Noel Cusa’s illustration in The Birds of the Western Palearctic, which shows the female with speculum completely covered by the surrounding breast and back feathers. I’ll go with that as you can’t get any more authoritative than The Birds of the Western Palearctic.

The female was on her own but when we returned forty minutes later there was no sign of her. Although this duck looked so petite compared with the nearby mallards and gadwall, the teal is in fact about 25% bigger than a dabchick.

We saw just one goosander this morning, a drake on the Upper Lake.

Nostell Middle Lake
Wigeon, gadwall and mallard on the Middle Lake at Nostell in yesterday morning’s fog.

Crow with Sweet Chestnut

crow with sweet chestnut

fungi on stump
Fungi on stump.

Perching on the iron fence by the Lower Lake at Nostell, a carrion crow is struggling to extract the sweet chestnut nuts from their spiky green casings. Two of the spiny husks have become firmly Velcroed together.

squirrel

fungi
Fungus by woodland path.

The experts at nut gathering are the grey squirrels. They are so intent on burying their cache that you can walk past within a few feet of them and they won’t even bother to look up.

They’ll poke their heads down amongst the leaf litter in several spots in succession. One suggestion is that they’ll dig several ‘fake’ holes which they’ll leave nothing in, to confuse any rival squirrel that might be watching them.

The Pleasure Grounds by the Lower Lake are the most popular with squirrels, not just because of the sweet chestnuts but also because no dogs are allowed. Up by the Obelisk Lodge we’d seen a dog walker we know chasing her dog along the cycles-only path.

“She’d seen a squirrel,” she explained, “They’ll stand there, deliberately teasing the dog!”

We think that we saw the squirrel that the dog had chased. It dashed at a frantic pace across the driveway beyond the Obelisk Lodge and shot into the bushes, which resulted in a startled cock pheasant bursting out, grockling in alarm.

Some squirrels do seem to egg on the dogs. In the park, one spaniel was barking in frustration and straining on its lead but the squirrel it had spotted was on the other side of the electric fence (and probably knew that it could scamper about with impunity).

Cirrus and con trails

There’s a windy swirl of low pressure, the remnants of ex-Hurricane Oscar, approaching across the Atlantic. Over to the west we can see a distant bank of cloud but here it’s sunny and still with wisps of cirrus and streaks of con trails against the blue sky.

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