AT
THIS EVENING'S Wakefield
Naturalists' Society meeting Mike Richardson gave
a talk called A Walk on the Wild
Side. As usual, I sketched from the screen (left). He explained
that he had been a climber and mountain photographer before a neurological
condition
forced him to give that up but he's found a way of getting back to
nature; he takes a regular walk through Bilham
Wood (usually
called Fishponds Wood on maps) close to his home near Doncaster and attempts
to photograph
every species that he finds
there. He says it's his therapy.
There's
a surprising variety of flowers, fungi, insects and birds, in this small wood;
the path is just 600 metres long
and everything he has photographed can be seen within 30 feet
of
it. I don't think you'd find such diversity on a similar stretch
of path through one of our local woods, such as Coxley Valley or Newmillerdam,
even if you visited as regularly as Mike does.
Annotated Slides
In Mike's digital presentation, most of the slides have a white border
with an English or, where appropriate, for instance with the fungi, a Latin
name
included below. This divides opinion amongst the Nats; two of our photographers
say that they prefer slides which fill the whole screen while a non-photographer
says she finds the title gives her a second chance to take in the 
name
of the species.
I like the format because it makes watching the show more like turning the
pages of a natural history book. He starts the talk with a 19th century map,
followed
by a Google Earth aerial view, which also gives you a feeling that you're getting
the kind of considered, through the seasons, study of the subject that you'd
get in book.