Wildlife
Flighty Bird
Flighty Bird is a sculpture carved in Ancaster Limestone. The piece of stone had lovely colouring, showing mottling and striations, telling of its formation millions of years ago, with varying deposits and layers of sediment. This bird carving was inspired by the many wild moorland birds here – they lie so still, quiet and […]
Garden Birds – Long-tailed Tits
Whilst counting for the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch last weekend, I tried to sketch my little visitors as I watched. A flock of Long-tailed Tits flew in to the feeder, and most of my drawings were of these charismatic little birds – I found it difficult as they all moved around so quickly! I […]
Big Garden Birdwatch
This is a Dunnock, perching on the edge of my trailer. This bird became the star of my Big Garden Birdwatch last year. This afternoon I’m getting ready for the 2014 watch, filling up feeders and making sure the birdbaths are topped up with fresh water. I love this dedicated hour of watching my […]
In the Workshop today
Apart from cloud watching that is – I actually worked pretty hard today, and now in the warmth, and full of supper, feel happily tired.
Knotty Brambles
I’ve spent time this weekend clearing brambles. The area where they grow, down the side of my workshop, used to be a hedgerow, there are ash tree stumps and it is a place I tend to leave to grow naturally wild. The geese have made nests and laid eggs there in the thick […]
MBE for Ryedale Wildlife Rehabilitation
I was so pleased to see on the front of our local paper today that Jean Thorpe, who founded Ryedale Wildlife Rehabilition, is receiving the MBE for services to wildlife rescue in Yorkshire. For over thirty years Jean has been dedicated to the rescue and returning to the wild, of injured and sick animals […]
Otters
I’m still reading Otter Country by Miriam Darlington – and loving it! Early in the book she writes that after reading Henry Williamson’s Tarka the Otter she was so enthralled and spell-bound by otters, that ‘for months afterwards I felt like I was an otter’. It was so exciting to read this, as it […]
Otter Country
The book Otter Country – in search of the wild otter, by Miriam Darlington, I think may be my best Christmas present this year. As soon as I had opened it, I just wanted to settle down quietly, and disappear into the story. The reviews on the back cover heighten the anticipation – […]
A Train of Jackdaws
This post might have been called Jackdaw-ation – a sort of mix between murmuration, but this time of Jackdaws, and it almost says adoration too – but instead we have a Train (the name for a group of Jackdaws). On these stormy, blustery days we’ve been having, the Jackdaws seem to gather for a […]
Weasel Sculpture
Wildlife is a constant inspiration for my sculpture – infused with the feeling of weasel after watching one bounding and zig-zagging in the field by my workshop, I wanted to carve one. I chose my favourite Yorkstone to carve the weasel, mainly because it is a stone I know well and all my energy […]