Wildwood Part Two

To continue: there are two double sided pages that serve as links between the groups of four: Above and below are the first of these, one with spring and one with autumn colours:

The next group of four begins with, on the front, great tits. The great tit colony in Wytham Woods is the focus of climate change research, for example in recording earlier and earlier nesting times.

and the green woodpecker on the reverse of the page is one of my favourites (though more often to be found looking for food on the ground than on tree barks, so this pose is a bit of artistic licence.

Next the odd one out, the ghost orchid. I have seen one but not in these woods. When, as little more than a child, I saw a whole group of them and discovered from my plant book that they were rare I was really excited. Didn't know then that even at that time they were so rare that people got really excited and reported their findings.

On the reverse are bluebells from my favourite time of year in the woods. Doing this page was a challenge, but eventually I traced each drawing onto opposire sides of a piece of tracing paper with different colour pencils, adjusted as much as I could then cut out the bits where there was no plant, which has actually worked out well and has provided each with an interesting background. Could have saved a lot of problems if I'd thought of this approach earlier. If you look closely you will see that I had to use a pale pink in order to get the highlights on the bluebells to come out the right colour - another example of what's there not being what you expect to see!

The back pages begin with the plantains - not specifically a woodland plant but you do get them, especially where the paths and tracks adjoin fields.

And on the other side, for spring, I have ramson buds. Otherwise known as wild garlic. These I drew from life in Strid Woods (couldn't get to Wytham that month!)

And the final page of this quartet begins with the crows, witty birds and amongst my favourites, here shown in tender domestic mode. I adapted this from a photograph on the Arkive site - http://www.arkive.org - by the late Maurice Tibbles, including details of my own drawings of crows from the stuffed specimens in Leeds City Museum's Development Centre:

And on the reverse a violet ground-beetle (more violet than is usual in real life) with all sorts of oddments including toadstools, leaves and a centipede:

One more instalment to come!