Brooding, heavy, weather

TWO BLACK-HEADED GULLS join the Crows browsing in the aisles, between the rows of mown grass. The tops of Cocksfoot grass are tinted purple. One flowering head of this grass has already popped out its pale yellow anthers, the male parts of the flowers, on the end of tiny threads, like a group of miniscule bungee jumpers.

Scale Insects sit on piles of white foam on the stem of a sapling Alder growing from the old concrete edge of the canal. They appear to be flat, flaky creatures, like a miniaturised trilobite.

Further along the towpath, on a small bush of Crack Willow, galls of the sawfly Pontania have turned from green to red. It is the female which is equipped with a little saw-like ovipositor, which she uses to lay her eggs in the leaf.

It's good to see two Reed Buntings back on the flooded field. This bird was once nicknamed the 'Pit Sparrow' in the Yorkshire coalfield because it was always found around the settling lagoons around colliery pit stacks.

Richard Bell,
wildlife illustrator
E-mail; 'richard@daelnet.co.uk'