A
COOLLY SILVERY full moon hung high over the lower end of the
wood yesterday evening, illuminating the edges of veils of cloud.Richard Bell's Wild West Yorkshire nature diary
Thursday, 4th January, 2007
A
COOLLY SILVERY full moon hung high over the lower end of the
wood yesterday evening, illuminating the edges of veils of cloud.
There's
no let up in the wild weather today. Tumbling grey-brown waters run over the
broken weir on the Calder while in the quieter backwaters, by a submerged, debris-strewn
bank of silt, a drake mallard looks oddly alone and disconsolate,
with no sign of a female in the area. They're usually together at this time
of year.
I
n
contrast, in the back garden at breakfast-time, seven female pheasants ambled
up the path from the meadow and milled about on the lawn by the feeders, soon
followed by three males.
Barbara, who is doing crosswords as I wrote this, informs me that, according to a clue she's just read, the collective noun for a brood of pheasants is a nye.
With
twenty or more goldfinches fluttering down from the crab apple
to the sunflower heart feeders and dunnocks hopping around on the patio, it
looks like a busy farmyard out there.
One
dunnock hops under the bird-bath which now rests on three house-bricks
at the corner of the patio. After I'd cleaned out the bird-bath
last week, I decided that if I applied gentle pressure I'd be able to straighten
its bent stem . . .
'CRACK!' That wasn't a good idea.
Our patio is a suntrap and in the fierce heat of summer the full strength of
the sun strikes one side of the hollow plastic stem and the bird-bath starts
to bend like a wilting flower.