A closer look at the golden tipped moss, I still haven't tracked down the species (you know where to e-mail the answer). This piece is from an old leylandii stump in the back garden.
As I lay it on the paper, a springtail emerges, a primitive insect the size of a small comma on a printed page. Just as its name suggests, it can store energy in its tail, then trigger the mechanism to spring 2 or 3 centimetres in the air.'but come, before that happens to me which will be as the Falling of your Hanger (White's favourite beech wood) would be to your Selbourne, & more irremediable: The Calder is discover'd thro' two or three openings fm my Garden; the new Navigation will carry it's Stream an unseen way, as soon as the Passage of it. I need say no more, I see You pity me. I who had been used to ye Majestick Thames, & had consoled Myself with ye Miniature Representation.'
The Calder and Hebble Navigation was constructed in stages in 1758, 1764, 1770 and 1779. The engineer in 1764 was James Brindley, 1716-1772, the man who constructed the Eddystone lighthouse, the Irwell aqueduct, and more than 360 miles of canal in England.
A surrealist touch in this goods yard; four battered coaches from Network South East. The life of those commuters in the metropolis seem a world away from this Yorkshire valley.
The Almond that I saw on Saturday appears on closer inspection to be some sort of flowering cherry, a Prunus. It had a pink flush when I saw it in bud, but now it has opened out to become classically simple Japanese cherry blosssom.
At 6.40 p.m. David rings from Grange, Cumbria; have I seen the lights in the western sky, Jupiter and Venus close to the horizon. They are so prominent that they get a mention on the local television news. David tells me that there are plenty of frogs in his pond, ahh! - the balmy joys of a Morecambe Bay winter.Richard Bell,
wildlife illustrator
E-mail;'richard@daelnet.co.uk'
