North Yorkshire – From Pyrenees to Pennines

Last on the Card: the Four for the Price of One Edition

The sight of the area round the ponds in our village these days tends to make most of us who live here grumpy, and to sound like fully paid members of Reform UK, the anti-immigrant political party responsible for normalising racism.

It’s Greylag Geese, wherever you look. As you can see.

Each pair of devoted geese (and I have to hand it them, they’re excellent and solicitous parents) has a brood of about nine. They spend much of their time terrorising the other water birds, who have largely done a bunk: or alternatively crossing the main road that bisects the village. This brings cars, bin lorries, the local bus to a halt in both directions as each mother leads her brood slowly across the road, while father brings up the rear. One brood may follow another. Then another brood, from the opposite side may decide to return. I wasn’t quick enough on the draw with this shot. The action is almost over.

It’s not just ducks and moorhens who are terrorised. We are not welcome either.

They only discovered our ponds about three years ago. But every year, last year’s babies return to the place of their birth, and every year, the problem gets worse. Back home, as we clean from our shoes the excrement which the geese deposit in plentiful piles on the pavements, we can be heard to mutter: ‘B***** immigrants, terrorising our ducks and murdering our ducklings. Why can’t they just go back where they came from?‘

Well, that’s not a happy note to end on. So instead, glance back to the header shot. That’s truly the last shot on my camera for May: the sunset from our bedroom window.

For Brian’s Last on the Card.

An Elderly Barn

Near to us is an ancient barn, unused apart from housing bits and pieces that somebody at sometime, decided needed storage space, and has probably long forgotten. The windows are broken, the woodwork rotten, the paintwork peeling. It’s ear-marked for development sometime soon and will be treated sympathetically and with respect. That’ll be good for its long-term future, but meanwhile, I’m rather fond of this distressed and decayed old building, and have chosen it for Egidio’s Stuck in Place challenge, where he invites us to stay close to home, and to spend a good half hour wandering nowhere very much, to see what we can see.

Spring has Sprung?

This week, Dawn of The Day After fame, has asked us to consider Spring for Leanne’s Monochrome Madness. No, she doesn’t want daffodils, blossom, gambolling lambs (though actually they would definitely do). Instead she wants us to treat the word as a verb, and find images about springing, or synonyms thereof.

So I’ve headed straight for some shots from Ripon Theatre Festival last year, from the weekend of street entertainment:

… which put me in mind of more dancing, of the Morris variety …

The dancers of Four Hundred Roses are my featured photo, where Morris dancing meets belly dancing meets steampunk.

Then I remembered an exhibition in The Baltic, Gateshead where an astronaut was about to leap on my head, And the day at Thorpe Perrow Birds of Prey Centre, when an owl plunged down to seize a meaty titbit, before springing up and away once more.

And then those springing lambs. Considering I live in Sheep Central, you’d think I’d have plenty of energetic shots. Nope. This is the best I can do.

Finally, I’ll give water a look-in. It can be fairly lively. Here’s poor Atlas at Castle Howard, bearing the whole world on his shoulders. And getting soaked in the process as water leaps and plashes around him. And next to him is a frisky and ebullient waterfall near Muker .

Dawn. Worth Getting Up For?

You’re not crawling out of bed at 3.30 because you’ve got an early shift at work. You’re not getting up at silly o’clock because you’ve got to go through the whole dismal business of airport security and a flight before beginning your holiday. No. You’re getting up because you want to. You can even largely skip getting washed, let alone finding presentable clothing.

That was me, last week.

3.45: I crept out of the house before it was even light, not waking anyone else up. In the car, on the way to Studley, the full moon shone cold white in an charcoal sky. The first glimmer of light – a sort of navy-with-apricot-ish coral stole across the horizon. Rabbits loped along the verges. A barn owl rose silently from the road ahead, clasping its prey.

About 4.05: At Studley, those rich salmon sky-tones were flaring brighter now. A blackbird sang. Just the one. Within minutes, he was joined by others. Then robins, song thrushes. After that, wrens, bluetits, then blackcaps, chaffinches, chiffchaffs and nuthatches. Even a curlew. Even a tawny owl. Not that I’d have known all this if it hadn’t been for Merlin.

I walked towards the trees, not yet quite in leaf, silhouetted against the brightening sky. Deer, more curious than startled, came to gaze at me before resuming grazing, or sometimes deciding that fleeing silently away together was a better option.

Gillet Hill gave views of Ripon and beyond, the now magenta sky beginning to halo the cathedral. But maybe the view from St. Mary’s would be even better? The deer thought so.

The church was a fine sight in its own right, but haze now hid the cathedral, and down the hill I went to catch, at 5.20 (not 5.35, as advertised), the sun rising over the horizon. I watched it climb – rather quickly, rather dramatically actually.

Then the early morning chill (1 degree ….) finally got to me, and I elected for the warmth of the car home, then a hot shower, cosy clothes, and – just a bit later, breakfast, fresh-brewed coffee, and the chance to share news of my adventures.

Wasn’t all that worth getting up for?

The correct answer is ‘Yes’.

For Jo’s Monday Walk

A Monday Portrait of Joey

Here’s who we found on a visit to Thorp Perrow yesterday. A mother wallaby and her frisky and curious joey. He didn’t get out of the pouch while we were there, but we knew he was skittish, because when he was nowhere to be seen, his mum’s pouch rippled energetically as he rushed around within.

Monday Portrait.

This post is dedicated to Brian of Bushboy’s World, because he has wallabies frollicking around in his back garden. Lucky Brian!

New Lambs, New Mums

Just down the road from home …

Monday Portrait(s)

A Lake, the Sea, a River

Patti invites us, in this weeks Lens-Artists Challenge, to consider the shots we take – those which have a foreground – perhaps introducing the scene; middle ground – perhaps what the shot is ‘about’; and background, setting the shot in its context, and rounding our ‘story’ off.

I’ve chosen three watery shots. The first, the featured photo, is so freighted with memories of a calm, peaceful November evening at l’Albufera, Valencia, full of peace and joy that I can’t really judge it on its merits. I like the swell of the rippling water in the foreground. The middle ground merely has a bird (I can’t any longer remember what kind) pausing on that pole: for me providing a little context. And the background is surely that dramatic evening sky?

My second is also an evening shot: a beachside walk in my daughter’s home town in Spain. There are seashore strollers silhouetted in the foreground. The Mediterranean itself provides middle-ground context, with no action whatsoever. And there’s Barcelona in the background. Or is Barcelona part of the middle ground, with the sunset providing the backdrop?

I come closer to home for my last shot, to Knaresborough. The raven perching on the wall is a surprising visitor to the photo, perhaps acting as compère, describing the scene behind: the quiet River Nidd and riverside houses. Behind is the commanding viaduct. Is this background feature actually the dominant part of the image? Three sides of the shot are framed by trees, giving a slightly bucolic air to this urban scene.

This was an interesting challenge, Patti. I think that in some ways the techniques you describe start to become more instinctive the more time one spends with camera in hand. But it’s good consciously to revisit them and think about them anew. But looking out of the window at the rain, I think I may give photography a miss this weekend!

Reflections on Phone Photography

I told Tina in no uncertain terms that I wouldn’t be joining in her Lens-Artists Challenge: Phone Photography, as my antique bargain-basement phone and I weren’t up to the job. She wasn’t having that, so I went and had a trawl.

And discovered that reflections seemed to come up as a theme that had worked quite well on days when I hadn’t got a camera to hand.

These were the first two I came across, both from Cosmo-Caixa Science Museum in Barcelona.

Still in Spain, we’ll pop to Valencia and its ancient Gothic bridge above the Turia Gardens.

And now we’ll return to England, and the Leeds-Liverpool Canal at Gargrave, where one day, this was the scene we saw as we walked under a bridge there.

And finally, a little gallery of other watery local photos- and that includes my header image too.

Thanks Tina. I’m glad you made me dig these out. Perhaps my phone doesn’t do so badly after all …. After all, that last photo got me second place in a public vote at Masham Sheep Fair the other year (I got first place too, but that wasn’t a reflection shot).

Oh Look! There’s Bird on the Roof

I thought of Brian on Sunday. Here’s why. Brian is the blogger charged with introducing this week’s theme for Monochrome Madness. And he’s chosen ‘On the Roof’.

I was with the family in Borough Market on Sunday. And we were having fun as we picnicked, at the expense of this poor gull try to land – time after time after time – on the roof of one of the sales kiosks.

Every time his feet touched down, he slithered and skittered, unable to find any purchase, until at the bottom, he more or less tumbled off … again. He persisted and persisted until, finally…

Here are some more herring gulls, all in either Whitby or Staithes: the seaside in fact. Perhaps they feel more at home and comfortable.

Here are birds who are definitely at home on a roof. Storks. A roof’s the perfect place for nest-building and raising a family. Let’s go to Tudela in Spain.

We could go to North Macedonia now, and stay in a hotel crowded with peacocks. One even had to escape to the roof for a bit of peace.

Back home for some more domestic shots: a crow on a nearby chimney pot, and a robin on the roof of a nearby bird house (does that count? I think so.)

We’ll finish off with a shot to complement the featured photo. Here’s a line of pigeons on some ridge tiles. They echo the ones which begin the post: a host of ceramic cockatoos (?) decorating the roof of a house in Busan, South Korea.

Thanks for a fun challenge, Brian!

Shadowed

A quick look at shadows, the enigmatic feelings of mystery they can sometimes produce.

The featured photo shows the early morning sun, somewhere near here. No mystery perhaps. More a feeling of unknown promise in the day ahead. And below, this quiet photo from Laberint d’Horta in Barcelona reminds me of a morning I spent there discovering , hidden amongst the trees, apparently ancient statuary.

Two urban photos: one from the once gritty underside of Leeds, suggesting its dirty and industrial past, the other from a up-to-the-minute quarter of Barcelona. I like the hard-to-decipher shadows on the textured overhanging roof.

And lastly, another from canal-side Leeds. Someone should write a story about this young woman sitting contemplatively beneath the shadows of the trees.

For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness …

… and for John, the week’s Lens-Artists Challenge host. He’s chosen ‘Shadowed’.