Tag - you're it!

I’ve been tagged by Bonny, so, for what it’s worth, here are my answers:

4 jobs I’ve had:
Market trader’s gofer – I spent more time in the betting shop, placing his bets, than I did doing any serious work.
Sweeping up dust in a brick yard – that was a thankless task.
Postman – I hated the early mornings, but looking back it was good practice for parenthood.
Science teacher for the last 14 years.

4 movies I like watching:
The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Great Escape, Zulu and Mr Forbush & the Penguins (bar the last one - a bit of a blokey selection, I know).

4 places I’ve lived: (all in the UK)
Biggleswade, Bedfordshire.
Wolverhampton.
Nottingham.
Leeds, of course, in God’s own county – Yorkshire.

4 TV shows I like:
Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares (coz I am one), Match of the Day, Countdown (sorry) and anything with wildlife in it (although I’m still waiting for someone to make a life history of the lapwing).

4 places I’ve vacationed:
Iceland, I slept through the best northern lights show in years, more than made up for by seeing Geysir and Strokkur and swimming in the blue lagoon - amazing.
Mallorca, I could sit all day just watching the oranges grow.
Isle of Mull, eagle and otter heaven, and seeing a corncrake for the first time was unbelievable.
North Norfolk, I love wild geese and this is my favourite place to see them.

4 dishes I like eating:
anything in a casserole, keema bhuna, pancakes with sugar (I wrote this on pancake day) and chicken from Nando’s.

4 Sites I like visiting:
Fire Star Arts, Middle of Nowhere (these first 2 aren’t in my favourite blogs list yet but will be when I get my finger out), Wild West Yorkshire, and the BBC’s cricket page (I couldn’t survive work without being able to get the latest England cricket score).

4 Places I would rather be now:
Anglesey.
Blacktoft Sands RSPB Reserve.
Filey.
Out in the garden, the sketch above is another sanitised view of part of our garden, in reality it needs a bit of my attention.
(Anywhere peaceful really).

4 Bloggers I am tagging:
Cindy, Nicky, Zephyr and Alice (that should cover the four corners of the globe).

Well, that was that. I quite enjoyed that, thanks Bonny.

In praise of gorse

gorse
Originally uploaded by wherethewolvesare.

I always think that when you see gorse from a distance it looks so drab, even with the yellow flowers. My theory is it's because the foliage is so dense, all but the uppermost branches are in heavy shade and because there's just no light filtering through the foliage, as you'd get with most plants.

This makes gorse a plant best seen close up, to appreciate the delicate-looking but needle-sharp armoury and the number of bright, even zingy, greens that there are to see. In close proximity, you can also catch the faint coconut scent of the flowers, which seems slightly out of place so early in the year (i.e. when it's still so cold!)

Colour and attitude

pheasant
Originally uploaded by wherethewolvesare.

For the past couple of weeks or so I've been trying to concentrate on what I like doing best in my sketchbook - drawing birds. I can see so many things wrong with my sketches but who cares, birds are so great to draw and paint. Here's another one, a male pheasant, how could you not want to try to render something looking like this?

I came to be sketching pheasants as it was too cold and wet for a walk yesterday, so we went for a drive through the villages and farmland to the north of Garforth. There was one field, near Aberford, full of pheasants. Well, four males really, but they're such resplendant birds they filled the field with their colour and attitude, and it was a small field. Their strutting out in the open is a sure sign they are on the lookout for females, which in turn is a sure sign that spring is on its way.

Spuggies

house sparrow
Originally uploaded by wherethewolvesare.

The conservation organisations are always telling us that, like too many species, sparrows are in drastic decline, and this fits in with my own observations. A few years ago it wasn't uncommon to see forty of them on and around the feeders in the garden, whereas now I'm lucky to see half a dozen. The biggest shame is that no-one seems to know why, although I think the RSPB or the BTO have offered a reward for the answer.

The thing I like about spuggies is that, at first, they look drab and uninteresting but as you'd expect (or I wouldn't mention it), they reward a second glance. The plumage of both males and females has remarkably intricate markings and shows great variation from one bird to the next. But it's their irrascible nature that sets them apart, I could watch them for hours, and hopefully, for many years to come.

Feeding the ducks

At the weekend, we all went to feed the ducks on the lake at Pontefract park. It's an unusual park as it's in the centre of Pontefract Racecourse, which itself used to be flanked to the north and east by 2 large collieries. The old spoil heap of one is still visible from the park. The park must have been even more of an oasis then when the collieries were open.

The lake is a little unusual as well. At first glance it just looks like any other municipal concrete-sided water receptacle, with healthy populations of bread-eaters, such as mallard, tufted duck and black-headed gull in winter and pedaloes for hire in summer. On closer inspection, the lake is big enough for those less interested in sliced white to keep their distance. So birds like moorhen, pochard and goosander are able to feed in peace.

Not that I have anything against mallards, tufties or black-heads. In fact quite the opposite, it was a treat to get such close views of such good looking birds. The top picture is a quick study of male and female mallards, and the bottom picture is a female tufted duck.

Graceful decay

corn
Originally uploaded by wherethewolvesare.

This is the remains of my attempt to grow baby corn cobs. I put them in early enough last year, but the summer was a bit up and down if I remember rightly, as was my watering regime. Leeds is bit northerly for such things as well. I live in hope so I'll try again this year.

The corn plant had such a stately air about it and it decayed so very gracefully that it's been left all winter. I'll tidy the garden in the coming weeks. Now that everything is starting to think about spring, there's an incongruity about the close proximity of Nature's first stirrings and the detritus that I've been too tardy to remove.

However, things will need to go some to catch the purple hebe in the front garden, which has been in flower since the end of January.

Our street

our street
Originally uploaded by wherethewolvesare.

This is the view to the east from my front gate. The trees are on top of the long hill or ridge, called Garforth Cliff (mentioned in previous posts). At it's southern end there's a rookery and a great view of the Peak district (sketched in previous posts).

It makes for such an unusual end to a suburban street, adding variety to the local habitats and constantly changing interest to the view. So it was about time I blogged it's portrait. Sorry for the delay.