Wild clary, Salvia verbenaca, on rough grassland at the foot of the magnesian limestone ridge near Wentbridge.

The sandstone wall of the bed behind our pond.

The advantage of walking around a habitat with a group of keen naturalists is that there are more eyes to spot life down in the undergrowth and to look up, this morning to see red kite circling, hobby soaring and kestrel hovering. On a brief flypast, a Spitfire roars over the ridge.

Without the group and our guide Les Driffield, I’d miss at least half of the species we see today.

Les wonders if we’re mainly birders as he’s the one who gets more excited about a small blue butterfly, his first record this year for the site. He’s got an eye for any rolled leaf or plant gall. He invites us to sniff a small tuft of fungus on a hawthorn twig. It smells of hawthorn blossom so any insect attracted to it could potentially spread the spores.

It’s all part of the biodiversity on this slope of grassland, woodland and artfully managed scrub, a contrast to the acres of oilseed rape and winter wheat in the arable landscape all around us.

We’re on a Wakefield Naturalists’ Society field meeting at Les’s private nature reserve on the magnesian limestone ridge near Wentbridge. The limestone outcrops only at the top of the ridge: the lower slope consists of the upper beds of the coal measures.

The Swollen-thighed Beetle

Only the males of this metallic-green flower beetle, also known as the the thick-legged flower beetle, Oedemera nobilis, have those bulging, oversize hind femurs. The larvae feed on rotting wood and on the stems and roots of herbaceous plants.

Red-and-black Froghopper

A centimetre-long red-and-black froghopper, Cercopsis vulnerata, rests amongst the path-side herbage. Unlike other species of froghopper, where the plant-sucking nymphal stage protects itself with a froth of ‘cuckoo-spit’ on the stems of plants, the nymphs of the red-and-black froghopper feed underground on roots.

Variable Longhorn Beetle

On the south-facing edge of the strip of woodland at the foot of the slope, someone spots a variable longhorn beetle, Stenocorus meridianus: body length an inch, antennae almost as long again.

Longhorn Moth

Another longhorn but this one is a moth, a ‘micro-moth’, the green longhorn, Adela reaumurella. This is a female: the males have antennae twice this length, three times the length of their bodies. The larvae live in the leaf litter and, like caddis-fly larvae, they make a case from small fragments.

Brimstone Moth

Les, who is a member of the Yorkshire Branch of Butterfly Conservation, set up a moth trap overnight. The catch includes a brimstone but it’s not the brimstone butterfly, this is the brimstone moth, Opithograptis luteolata, which has been attracted to the UV lamp overnight but which will also fly by day. The larvae feed on hawthorn and other shrubs.

Link

Butterfly Conservation Yorkshire

Drawing the pigmy goats at Blacker Hall Farm reminds me of the two-minute pose warm-up drawing at the start of a life-drawing class.

The only poses that do last marginally longer are when the goats are feeding on hay but unfortunately that means their heads are hidden in the feeder. Eventually one or two of them settle down, but they’re easily distracted.

The most dynamic poses are when the goats are grooming or scratching themselves. They can scratch the back of their necks by leaning their heads back to use the tips of their backwards-curving horns or they can reach almost the same spot with a balletic stretch of a rear leg. Hope we don’t get that one as a warm-up exercise at our Tai Chi class.

There’s a brief bit of head-butting: a larger female putting a smaller goat in its place at the hay feeder. It wasn’t especially aggressive, perhaps more of a social interaction or even an element of play-fighting.

I could collected a whole bunch of accurate information about their appearance by taking photographs this morning, then draw a detailed illustration using the photos as reference but I’ve done a lot of that recently and I need to free up my drawing. I want to try to draw the behaviour of the goats rather than minutely record their appearance.

On the shorter-haired goats, I like the way you can see more of their anatomy. This white one has a structure with the organs of its body suspended from the skeleton.

This page for one of my articles is a joint effort: the cut-out images from newspapers and magazines were collected by a young worsted cloth mender who worked in Valley Mills, Pudsey, over a century ago. Sophia Barnett folded them away in her 1904 school prize, a copy of Mrs Gaskell’s Cranford, which I bought from a second-hand shop in Horbury in the early 1970s.

Who’s Smiler?

It’s been fascinating to research the who is depicted but I haven’t had any luck with the cartoon character.

I’m guessing that ‘Smiler’ was a music hall comedian or possibly a silent film star.

If you have any idea as to who he is please let me know.

A couple of tawny mining bees were making a start on their burrows at the edge of the riverside path.

By the canal towpath a few common dog-violets are in flower.

And a patch of germander speedwell.

Red deadnettle has been conspicuous for a while and now a patch of white deadnettle is coming into flower. Deadnettle it might be but I managed to rub my hand on a stinging nettle as I took this photograph, then kneel on one too.

We spotted a few alderflies by the canal. The can soon disappear when they land amongst the grasses and dead plant stems but this one settled on my leg, giving me a chance to take a close-up.

There’s been a lot of this small white crucifer sprinkled in drifts alongside the towpath. I haven’t got the leaves showing in this photograph, so I can’t narrow down which species it is: a bitter-cress perhaps?

In a nibbled bramble leaf, a long and winding leaf mine. A scar at the end might indicate where, after pupation, the adult insect emerged. Alternatively it could be where a bird spotted it as a potential prey item.

There are fresh leaves of dog’s mercury in hedge banks and along the woodland edge. These appear to be plants with male flowers: I think those are stamens covered with pollen.

I’ve drawn Rob as a grizzled mariner: the guy who scans the horizon for pods of rogue orcas; a safe hand at the wheel as the sun rises over the Sahara off the port bow.

The Ikinoo sailed safely past the rocks where my great 4-times grandfather Billy’s ship, HMS Africa, was stranded in the great storm after the battle of Trafalgar before being towed to Gibraltar.

I’m so sorry now that Barbara and I didn’t take the opportunity to join Rob and Karen at Gibraltar or Barbate to follow in Grandad Billy’s foootsteps, but so glad that we caught up with them in Greenock two years ago, we’ll miss him.

Rob died in Lanzarote on the 9th February, the day before what would have been his 53rd birthday.

There’s a bit more enthusiasm in birdsong now. The strident see-saw of the great tit, the varied riffs of the song thrush and more substance to the song of the robin. At Brodsworth this morning we heard the laughing call of a green woodpecker – but didn’t spot the bird itself.

A wood pigeon poddles along, following a potential mate. She’s not impressed. She keeps looking over her shoulder then waddling on. I’d describe her attitude as embarrassed. He is apparently taking these backward glances as a come-on. He keeps following her along the railway sleeper edging of our 6 foot-square raised bed, round and round like the figures walking endlessly around the stepped ramparts of an Escher illusion.

It’s time to get those boots muddy again. My regular ‘Wild Yorkshire’ nature diary in February’s ‘The Yorkshire Dalesman’ on the alleged benefits of yomping through mud and splashing through puddles. No, honestly, you’ll enjoy it . . .

A heist, a tapestry and a flood. Councillor Oddie and novelist Stan Barstow feature in my article in February’s ‘Dalesman’ magazine, ‘Stones, Stitches and Stories’ celebrating 120 years of Horbury’s Carnegie Free Library.

To hear more – including the connection with the formidably talented Marie Corelli – you’re welcome to my short talk, admission free, at the library, 10.30 am, Friday 13th February.