The snowdrops always come first. Earlier than usual? Perhaps, but not excessively so, and they are sitting in a nice, sheltered spot. This is not some rural woodland though; in fact these are on the uni campus, just next to the Roscoe building.
Along the stone retaining wall of Hebden Bridge railway station grow substantial patches of moss, and this little fellow was hopping along and burrowing into every little bit of it this morning, in search of food, unconcerned by my relatively nearby presence and far more bothered about staying warm on a cold winter’s day. Look how fluffed up its feathers are. I hope it sees out the winter.
“Hi Bob. Good pickings today, don’t you think?”
“Definitely. Must be all those people driving back from their Christmasses in Scotland. Ahh… look, I see an abandoned Kit-kat over there.”
“Sure — see you later….”
This spider was not a big one, but its web was expansive enough, and as you can see, it’s still hard at work with the building. What marvellous creatures these are: there are many species which build some kind of dwelling, of course, but can’t manage it purely with goo extruded out from their bodies.
However, you can see that it’s working on the outside of a rather grubby window (the kitchen one, as it happens). By the evening, evidence (like, a bill on the doormat) then suggested our window cleaner had been round on one of his seasonal visits and all this was nowhere to be seen. I bet the spider was substantially pissed off, I know I would have been.
I believe these clusters of bright and, definitely, orange berries are firethorn [genus Pyracantha] — doubtless someone will correct me if I am wrong. A whole slew of them have grown to cover the fence outside the Ellen Wilkinson Building, anyway. Valuable winter bird food, apparently.
There have been a couple of exceptions — namely 2018, when I was in Germany, and 2021 on St Helena (and in 2019 I was about to go to Indonesia but not quite yet on my way) — but the 22nd November is not usually a date on which much happens. I find this a depressing, enervating time of year to be honest. Everything’s in decline yet we are still weeks from the turnaround point at the solstice. This rose hip (and feel free to correct me if I’ve got the botany wrong) is still putting in an effort, I guess, but most of the rest of nature has kinda given up. I know how it feels.
This little feller is, at most, two inches long but what does he care? In the wild these kinds of frog accumulate enough poison in their skin to kill a dozen people. But apparently they acquire it by eating certain types of ant and other insects, and when fed a different diet in captivity, the toxicity is lost. Maybe he doesn’t know. If he did, would he care? (Taken in the Manchester Museum’s vivarium, where saw some of his cousins before, in 2014.)
Yes guys — you’ve been spotted. Then again with those bright buttocks you might as well paint a target on your behinds: I have relatives who will get itchy trigger fingers just looking at this photo.
This is not the nearest to the centre of Hebden Bridge that I’ve ever seen deer — that award is still held by the one spotted at the railway station in April 2019 — but let’s say it’s the second-closest: 15 minutes’ walk from the market square, at most, and with houses just yards away.
The courtyard within it continues to be the only truly nice thing about the Ellen Wilkinson Building, my place of work for the last 20 years and, more or less, three months. Will I miss it when I finally do manage to leave? Probably not. But it can look nice, at different times of the year.
I know it’s not long since I did a heron but they are good looking creatures with an agreeable habit of staying still for the camera. And this one isn’t the usual stamping ground in Hebden Bridge, but rather Stalybridge, the water being that of the River Tame.
Being 42 