Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
We’ve got most of the Newmillerdam ecosystem appearing in Ode to a Duck. It took me a while to work out how to stop my characters floating around – you simply pin their feet to the background – but that hasn’t been a problem with these two.
Joining the swan for the prologue, this Canada goose. I haven’t given him moving eyes and eyebrows, but he seems suitably goose-like without them.
“Was that a roach?”
“No, a perch.”
The angler has just unhooked a small fish and returned it to the canal. I think of perch as being deep and narrow but it takes a while for the adult to develop that impressive hump and belly.
The towpath is regularly mowed so instead of going to seed the plants along the water’s edge are still sprouting fresh flowers: tansy, greater willowherb, leafy hawkweed, red clover, yarrow and autumn dandelion. Elderberries are now ripe and we’re well into the blackberry season.
Half a dozen streaky brown mallards dabble and preen by the old weir on the Calder at Horbury Bridge. Even the normally splendid drakes go into a subdued eclipse plumage at this time of year.
Two moorhens stalk about, swimming briefly from rock to rock. 
As we pause on the bridge two dragonflies zoom around below us.