Pools have formed in the lower corners of fields, one of these temporary lagoons has a small muddy island with just enough room for the three mallards that are standing on it.
Trees were slow to turn colour this autumn but now there’s an ochre harmony to the foliage and increasingly they’ve lost there leaves. These poplars in a shelter belt at Dobbies Pennine Garden Centre, Shelley, on the 210 metre (656 feet) contour, overlooking the valley of Sheply Dike, are just clinging on to their topmost leaves, which is the opposite to maples and ash that I’ve seen that have been losing their top leaves first.
The poplar leaves by the lock on the Leeds Liverpool canal at Gargrave have all but turned to leaf mould, leaving fragmentary leaf skeletons.
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.
