Tubular Bells

Saturday, 23rd April 2005
Wild West Yorkshire nature diary

We don't seem to have touched the earth since we landed on Tuesday so this afternoon, when I realised that I wasn't going to get much further with my font design program, we set off for a short walk along the towpath. At this time of year this long, straight stretch of the canal is a bright green corridor with the hawthorns on either bank in fresh leaf.

We saw a few hawthorns in full blossom last week in Mallorca but here we probably won't have much until mid-May.

One stretch of the towpath is dotted with bluebells. These are our native species; the ones with the long tubular bells.

Blackbirds are singing, one every 50 yards or so, by a bend on the river, one of them from the top of a telegraph pole. I see a mistle thrush perching on a wall across the river, a species that I now realise we never saw in Mallorca.

Lesser celandine is still in flower, hedge garlic is coming into its own, but the most intense colour comes from the dandelions catching the afternoon sun on a grassy bank by the cricket pitch.

The cricket season is about to get underway. Summer must be just about to start.

Richard Bell, richard@willowisland.co.uk