Local invertebrate life of the showy sort. Clockwise from top left: Beautiful Demoiselle, Black Hawker, Small Copper and Ginger Miner.

Afternoon walk along the riverbank. Plenty of butterflies, including this small skipper, and a few garden 'escapees' among the wild flowers.

Breakfast with the swifts.

Thunderclouds dispersing over Ilkley Moor.

A flock of starlings catch the evening light as they turn above me, tails fanned in synchrony.

The local swifts chasing and screaming. Sunset yesterday from our bedroom window.

#swifts #sunset

Today is World Refugee Day. Here’s a poem called ‘Refugees’.

Wednesday evening walk along the River Wharfe. Goosander, oystercatcher and common sandpiper all with young, sand martins in and out of their nests in the bank, curlews calling in the adjacent fields, blackbird, song thrush and mistle thrush competing from the trees, and the flash of a kingfisher near the end.

Mountain watching...

My afternoon art buddy, a ~6mm jumping spider examining the quality of the watercolour paper and inspecting the water jar.

Watercolour sketches started yesterday and finished this morning. Changing light over the Sound of Sleat from Isleornsay, Skye.

#watercolour #landscape #mountains #Scotland #art

In the garden in June: wood mouse, zebra jumping spider, young robin and azure damselfly.

Wood engraving is primarily a black and white medium. Tonal variation comes from the density and nature of the marks. That can fail and an engraving looks flat. This was the case with Cir Mhòr and Goatfell, a scene that needs a sense of distance - aerial perspective. Correction by further engraving looked difficult or impossible. So, I cut masks to enable me to print it in 3 layers: pale grey distance, dark grey mountains, black rock buttress at the front. Rescued, I think, but time consuming!

#SilentSunday #NotAI #BlackAndWhite #MonoChrome #Desert #Landscape #Photography #Darktable

The geologist James Hutton was born in Edinburgh 300 years ago tomorrow. Two slices of Scottish geology I (an ecologist) have enjoyed studying. The Moine Thrust Mylonites at Faraid Head, Balnakeil Bay and lichens on a basalt dyke in Lewisian gneiss, Raasay.

#geology #JamesHutton #DeepTime #Scotland

Those interested probably already know about it, but if not:
https://interactivemaps.uk/os-benchmark-archive/#8/53.551/-2.062
The OS Benchmark Archive - memorials to how survey/mapping used to be done. Many of the original 500,000+ benchmarks are still there but they are disappearing.
If you have access they are on OS Maps Desktop too.
There is one on the wall at the bottom of our garden.

#maps #mapping #OrdnanceSurvey

Those interested probably already know about it, but if not:
https://interactivemaps.uk/os-benchmark-archive/#8/53.551/-2.062
The OS Benchmark Archive - memorials to how survey/mapping used to be done. Many of the original 500,000+ benchmarks are still there but they are disappearing.
If you have access they are on OS Maps Desktop too.
There is one on the wall at the bottom of our garden.

#maps #mapping #OrdnanceSurvey

Clearing my workspace for the next wood engraving project. Away with the chaos created by painting. Watercolour sketch - looking west to Skye from mainland Scotland.

A hot Bank Holiday. A day when the locals find a quiet, shady nook to escape the record-busting heatwave and the visiting hordes who fill the river hotspots with noise and the smells of barbecues and hot sunscreen. Halcyon days.

House martins have investigated the gable of the house opposite for several years, but this is the first time they have done so early enough to build nests there.

A couple of fuzzy photos taken today, better ones to come I hope.

#birds #nesting #nature