Author: Richard Lindsay

Working from home yesterday (Wednesday), stuck in the house all day, but the wildlife came to the window to make up for it…

My wife called me, saying, “There’s a bird with red on it! In the oak trees!”  So we both peered out of the living room window at the oak trees and for a while all I could see was oak tree, then something moved and there was a flash of red:

A greater spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major) was methodically working its way around the tree trunks and thicker branches:

It was able to cling on almost upside down thanks to its two sets of opposing toes, as it explored the underside of large branches:

But the most surprising thing was the fact that it obviously terrified the pair of jays occupying the oak trees. They fled to the very top of the oak trees as the woodpecker advanced towards them, raising their crests and fluffing out their feather to look bigger, but still fleeing whenever it came close, and generally looking most put out.

Very funny.

…and then today brought a most unexpected but very pleasant surprise on the walk down to the station – but more of that tomorrow (as it’s now late)…

We certainly had weather yesterday.  What a day…  In the end, there was so  much going on that I had 283 photographs after the failed ones had been deleted (a typical day is around 60-100 photographs in total).  No sooner had the camera been put away in its bag than something else totally unexpected appeared.  That said, by far the most spectacular thing of the day proved impossible to capture on camera…  (as usual, click on images to see larger versions).

Things started fairly quietly on the way down to the station with a greenfinch rasping and whistling on a TV aerial – and looking very much like an ‘Angry Bird’.  I hand-reared one when I was at school.  it was called Scruffy and lived in my bedroom when it wasn’t out teasing the local cats:
Heading down to Stratford from Colchester courtesy of Abellio Greater Anglia, the clouds over the oil-seed rape fields to the west of Marks Tey had the promise of fair-weather cumulus, and by the fields to the west of Witham they were looking even more promising:


However, a big bank of cumulus congestus approaching the fields just east of Chelmsford, then thickening into fat rows of cumulus mediocris over New Hall School, Chelmsford, suggested that there was a fair amount of energy in the lower atmosphere (and energy often means trouble):


A brief respite and more blue over the poplar fields near Ingatestone hinted at clearing skies:

But by the Lone Oak east of Shenfield the cumulus was becoming congested again:

By Stratford, things were starting to become interesting, with signs of cumulonimbus calvus developing (and cumulonimbus is a signal to check for your umbrella):

By the time I arrived at Galleon’s Reach DLR station the view westwards to Canary Wharf was becoming decidedly chaotic:

Then it became that classic spring weather – ‘sunshine and showers’, with one particular bank of cumulonimbus capillatus apparently stuck on the western edge of Shooters’ Hill, which sits across the Royal Albert Dock and the Thames from the University of East London Docklands Campus:

The showers were mostly rain, sleet and hailstones and the towering cumulonimbus capillatus was indeed towering:

Meanwhile the planes continued to land and take off from London City Airport:

…while above them the planes to Heathrow were heading into the midst of a great bank of cloud drenching Canary Wharf:

Suddenly it was very dark and it started snowing outside – yes, blizzard snowing – for at least 2 minutes. As the light returned I grabbed my camera to see what had caused winter to return. The view from Galleon’s Reach DLR Station seemed almost apocalyptic:

Trotting down to the Thames at Galleon’s Reach an hour or so later at the end of the day, I had another blizzard, but this time of goldfinches, diving in and out of the buddleia and fence netting:

To the north, a huge cumulonimbus capillatus anvil was drifting eastwards towards Barking and Dagenham, and planes heading east from London City Airport were doing their best to avoid it. The view from the plane must have been extraordinary:

Then a kestrel flew overhead, squealing with indignation because it was being chased by a couple of crows:

Arriving down at the Thames at Galleon’s Reach, I could see the monster that had turned our day into night and our spring into winter, drifting eastwards towards Dartford:

Planes coming in to land at London City Airport were having to fly round, over, or even in some cases through this monster, and the scenes out of the windows from these planes must have been incredible – or incredibly terrifying:



They weren’t the only things coming into land. A shellduck flew past and plonked down onto the Thames in a flurry of wings:

Meanwhile the towers of cumulus and cumulonimbus continued to dump rain, hail, sleet or snow on random parts of the landscape:



Still the planes struggled into London City Airport through it all:

Finally heading to Galleon’s Reach DLR and home, and having put the camera away, an angry altercation between a heron and a crow (they’re a rough lot, the crows of Beckton) above the station had me scrabbling for the camera again:

Finally on the train back to Colchester from Stratford, the most enormous cumulonimbus capillatus turned a stunningly beautiful peach colour, lit up by the rays of the setting sun as we emptied passengers out at Chelmsford, but the train then immediately headed straight towards this huge cloud so it was impossible to photograph. All that was visible was the northern margin of it, and my usual tricks with lens shades couldn’t stop the reflections of the carriage lights, so here’s the result (of just a small portion of that beautiful cloud) without all the tricks of the trade:

Passing under that cloud and on to Colchester, there was just enough light to catch the sunset over oil-seed rape fields at Marks Tay:

Busy day – plus work!

Trains chaos today so I was working at home and assumed that there would be no photography – especially as the weather was so grey and wet – but the wildlife came to me..!
I was just having a coffee break when I heard all sorts of screeching and swearing outside. Peering out of the living room window I saw two jays having a battle royal with a magpie – again!…(see previous post, along with robins, yellowhammers and all sorts…. Myland wildlife, Colchester 21st April 2016).
By the time I’d grabbed the camera (as usual, click on images to see larger versions) the fight had stopped and the jays were sitting in the branches of the oak trees opposite us, peering down at their tormentor, while the magpie strutted around looking as though it owned the small green around the oaks.


The magpie had a good poke around and found something edible:

Then a couple of wood pigeons came crashing down onto the green and proceeded to do a ‘Lambeth Walk’ beside each other before piling into each other with no holds barred, then doing the Lambeth Walk again – really quite funny, although I’ve never seen wood pigeons act with such venom before;



This was too much for the magpie, who flew off to taunts from the jays.
One of the jays then started poking around in the ivy covering one of the oaks, apparently finding something juicy:

The other jay stalked along the ditch at the foot of the oaks, tossing leaves aside:

Then it hopped up onto the green and started looking intently for something:

Eventually it started digging furiously with its bill, tugging at something, and I assumed that it had found a juicy worm or beetle:

Then with an almost audible ‘pop’, the jay pulled out an acorn from the soil:

It flew up into the oak tree and spent a few blissful minutes gorging on its un-buried treasure.


It seems that there are no such things as quiet wildlife days in Myland…

After the blue skies and high cirrus of early morning (see earlier post), things steadily clouded over during the morning.  The journey down to the station was enlivened, however, by the fact that the time of year has come for mallards to be choosing bizarre places to think about nesting. Note that she doesn’t entirely trust her male guards to alert her to danger (click on images to see larger versions):

The sky was still streaked with high cirrus as we swept past St Andrew’s Church, Marks Tey courtesy of Abellio Greater Anglia en-route to Stratford from Colchester.

…and there was even still a fair amount of blue sky over the oil-seed rape fields as we headed towards Kelvedon, although the cirrus was thickening into bands of cirrostratus:

Towards Chelmsford, however, a truly weird bank of cloud developed, looming over New Hall School, just east of Chelmsford. It looked as though it couldn’t make up its mind whether to be threatening stratocumulus, pannus or full-blown mamma:

After Chelmsford, the view south towards Galleywood and Billericay had a sky full of cirrostratus blotting out all signs of blue sky, beneath which were thickening bands of stratocumulus with praecipitatio giving everything beneath a good shower:

Things just remained grey and damp for the rest of the day…

Up early again last Thursday, though not before dawn this time.  The sky was looking rather interesting so it was a case of grabbing wellies, coats and cameras and heading off out into the fields.  The sky was streaked with high cirrus (click on images for larger versions):

It feels distinctly as though the birdlife is more casual about human presence early in the morning. Blue-tits, blackbirds, great-tits all seemed largely un-bothered as I walked past:

Then I became aware that I was also being watched – by a normally-timid woodpigeon attempting to look like an ivy leaf:

Walking along the farm track there seemed to be a great deal of activity associated with a hedge up ahead, while the sky continued to do its cirrus thing:

A robin seemed to feel that it owned the hedge:


Meanwhile I was being scolded by a blue-tit who was busy hunting insects in the blackthorn flowers in the bushes behind me, although it decided against outright confrontation:

…when a flash of colour in the corner of my eye caught my attention. A jay flew into the same blackthorn bushes. It soon became obvious that it was flying back and forth between the field behind the blackthorn and a location some way down the hedge in front of me, carrying twigs for nest-building. Eventually I realised that there were two, operating in relays, and it was fascinating to watch the fact that they flew through the air like swimmers through water, giving a flap then gliding with wings against the body before flapping again. Approaching the nesting hedge they always did a spectacular braking flare:










Then suddenly all hell broke loose. The jays started screeching like a cockatoo with laryngitis, actually jumping up and down with anger, and I realised that a magpie had sneaked into their hedge from the far side, to investigate their nest. There was a huge amount of flapping, barging and swearing, until eventually the magpie fled into a nearby tree-top, chased by the jays. Eventually one of them looked down at me as if to say, “Well, what do you think of that? The cheek of it..!!”

Then to round off a thoroughly exciting early morning stroll, a pair of yellowhammers leapt out of the hedge as I was heading home and perched on the hedge-top, providing a lovely view of them:

…and so, home past the fields of sprouting wheat, then off to work…

Apologies for the silence but it’s been a busy couple of months at the university producing a range of environmental material for partner organisations.  More about that over the next few weeks.

In the meantime, and given that Etsy provides a rather simpler shop set-up than building my own web-store, I’ve also now created a RichardLindsayArts store on Etsy to complement my existing web-store, which will itself have a major overhaul shortly.

There’s just a few items in the Etsy store at the moment to establish the various types of products, but I’ll be filling the store with more items over the next two or three weeks.

On-line store update :

Images for download purchase are proving more arduous to set up in store than initially appeared.  Consequently uploading all the files currently available in the shop image galleries for printed photos will take a some days to achieve for the Downloadable photographs section of the store, but I’ll aim to add at least a few per day.  Image details (species names and so on) will also be expanded upon later.

After a steep learning-curve worthy of the Matterhorn, the on-line store for Richard Lindsay Arts and Letters officially opened today.

To enter the store, either click on the Store button top-right on the front page of this blog site, or go direct to richardlindsayartsandletters.com

The store offers the opportunity to purchase (at very modest prices) prints of the various photographic images that have featured here or on the linked Facebook page.  It also offers larger canvas prints at slightly less modest prices, plus the opportunity to purchase full-sized download version of these (again, at modest prices, although if the download is for commercial use it would be kind if you could e-mail richard@richardlindsayartsandletters to discuss reasonable terms).  The store also offers a small selection of lino prints, printed cards of lino prints, plus a small selection of other original artworks, although the plan is to add to this artwork collection in the coming months.

The in-store photographic collection is still being added to so does not yet fully reflect the range of images in the galleries here or posted on the Facebook pages, but everything should be harmonized within a month or so.