Ash Tree Disease Spells Bad News For British Wildlife

The news that ash tree dieback disease has reached the Yorkshire Wolds is very, very worrying, not least because of the effect that the possible devastation of our native ash stock will have on wildlife here. 

There are an estimated 80 million ash trees in the UK and ash woodland is a distinctive feature of the Yorkshire Wolds.

This is the view from my studio window: a tapestry of fields and hedgerows, interspersed with pockets of ash woodland. It is a very typical Wolds scene. But how will it look in 20 years time?
In Denmark, where the disease has already taken hold, 90% of ash trees have either died or are dying.
Ash trees make up one third of Britain's trees. Their hollow trunks are used by little owls, barn owls and tawny owls. Woodpeckers too, both green and spotted, like to raise their broods in ash hollows and tree creepers nest under the peeling bark of old ash trees. Robins, redstarts and plenty more also thrive in ash woodland.

I photographed these little owl chicks in an old ash tree near my studio in Thixendale.
I really hope that we can do something to prevent the spread of this disease. I shall be writing about my concerns in next week's Ryedale Gazette & Herald. Make sure you pick up a copy on Wednesday, December 26th.

Short eared owls about?

After nearly two days of solid rain, I'm hoping the short-eared owls will be hungry and out hunting today.

I have to drive out to Hull to deliver an original painting to its new owner so I'm planning a detour to see if I can get any photographs. These are some I took last year.

It is a big foggy in Thixendale though so I hope that it's a bit clearer by the Humber!

Elephant Encounters

I watched the four-footed stars of Planet Earth elephant surfing during my trip to Kenya in August. Read all about it by clicking here to transfer to my latest column in The Yorkshire Post.
I'm taking bookings now for another guided safari to Kenya in 2013 and shall be giving a talk and slideshow on the trip on January 12. Tickets are just £10, click here to book.

Last Christmas for the Partridge in a Pear Tree?

It was worrying to read in @The Guardian yesterday that partridge populations are still dangerously low. According to wild bird statistics published by Defra yesterday, there was a 30pc drop in numbers in the five years to 2010.
It seems that outside of the popular carol, The Twelve Days of Christmas, partridges may soon cease to exist.
And the fate of turtle doves, which also feature in the yuletide staple, is even worse, according to the RSPB. The organisation, which this year launched the Operation Turtle Dove campaign, claims the decline is nothing short of a 'wildlife disaster'.
We must all do our best to protect these precious English partridge species - this surely can't be their last Christmas?
They really are beautiful birds, as you can see from these pictures I painted of them. They have very delicate, grey plumage, which is so much more subtle than the brighter red-legged French partridges that thrive in their place.

Let's make sure this is not their last Christmas!

Leopard Lure

Take a look at my latest column in today's Malton Gazette & Herald. I've focused on the recent trip I led to Kenya's Masai Mara and how nervous I was about leading a group of 11 people from the UK on what I had promised would be the trip of a lifetime. I need not have worried, we saw a leopard on the first day!

The making of a hare painting

It's taken months to finish, measures more than 5ft long and needed its own, bespoke frame (which I built and then painted in a complimentary wash), but by goodness am I going to miss this painting when it goes to its new owner this week.

It's been with me in essence since the harsh winter of 2010, when I saw an unlikely group of 51 hares massed together in the heavy snow. Hares are usually solitary animals and so I followed them through knee-deep snow knowing that they had to be courting and hoping to see them box.

I spent a long time mulling over the concept of a painting of the group in the snow and at last, once I'd decided on a composition, began the painting this year. I wanted to paint something on a larger scale - and the first issue I had was how to balance the board I was going to paint on on to my easel.

I begin most of my paintings with a base colour of ice-blue for the snow and gradually adding warmer yellows and whites for that frosty crust of snow.

Once the background was ready, I started to sketch in the outlines of the hares.

They looked like ghosts to begin with.

I paint directly from my photographs. You can see here how I used the original photographs I took and organised them in to a composition I liked.

It took days to block in the basic colours of each hare.

I added more and more detail and texture with each application of paint.

Then it was time to go back and add more detail to the background and to each hare.

At this stage I've got it all on bar the whiskers!
Soon it will be time to deliver it to its new home. I'll take it personally and supervise the hanging before I say goodbye.

Welcoming Back Otters

I've been celebrating the incredible success of otters in Yorkshire at the gallery this week.
The theme of my exhibition has been geared around telling their incredible survival story and I've dedicated a new series of otter paintings, run a series of guided walks to find otters and held an evening of talks by otter experts in tribute to it.
There was a time when to see an otter was a rare treat and in fact these shy animals faced extinction in the 1960s.
Now, thanks to a concerted effort by conservationists, they can be seen on every waterway in the UK.
Today The York Press published a feature on my exhibition about their amazing journey from the brink of extinction.
As is so often the way with wildlife, when it came to trying to find an otter to paint for the exhibiton, I was stumped. Although these creatures are now thriving in Yorkshire, my attempts to get any photographs to paint from were constantly thwarted and so, frustrated, I ended up going all the way to Jura in Scotland in search of inspiration.

Read about how I finally found an otter for this painting in my monthly Yorkshire Post column here.
There is a guided walk tomorrow led by Jon Traill from the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust to look for otters along the River Hull near Driffield. If you are interested in booking a place on it contact us here at the gallery or follow this link to my website.