Wild West Yorkshire nature diary, Saturday 13th March 1999
BLACK-HEADED GULLS, most without their dark brown caps as yet, paddle on the flash of standing water that is at last beginning to ebb on a field of emerging brassicas.
A girl's horse stops by Thornhill Hall Farm. He seems mesmerised, lost in thought.
'Oh, is this the field he came from?' the girl's mother asks. What is going through his mind, what memories does he have?
A quiet cobbled track edged with moss climbs the slope from a lock on the canal, passing a small quarry, now disappearing into oak woodland. Because of its position once you get on this path the stray sounds from the surrounding countryside suddenly cease and you enter a quiet and rather mysterious byway of the industrial age.
A Robin sings from a gate post by a flagstone roof that is perhaps two or three hundred years old. The flags are arranged from smaller at the top to larger and thicker towards the bottom. A spreading drift of Stonecrop grows on the lower part of the roof.
The countryside is drying out but their are still strips of flood waters alongside Smithy Brook. We hear our first Yellowhammer singing. There are 20 frogs, but no frogspawn in the pond.
BLACK-HEADED GULLS, most without their dark brown caps as yet, paddle on the flash of standing water that is at last beginning to ebb on a field of emerging brassicas.
A girl's horse stops by Thornhill Hall Farm. He seems mesmerised, lost in thought.
A quiet cobbled track edged with moss climbs the slope from a lock on the canal, passing a small quarry, now disappearing into oak woodland. Because of its position once you get on this path the stray sounds from the surrounding countryside suddenly cease and you enter a quiet and rather mysterious byway of the industrial age.
A Robin sings from a gate post by a flagstone roof that is perhaps two or three hundred years old. The flags are arranged from smaller at the top to larger and thicker towards the bottom. A spreading drift of Stonecrop grows on the lower part of the roof.
The countryside is drying out but their are still strips of flood waters alongside Smithy Brook. We hear our first Yellowhammer singing. There are 20 frogs, but no frogspawn in the pond.