Birds and Humans: Part 1

Posted on May 21, 2026 by hestercoxprintmaker

“No one will protect what they don’t care about; and no one will care about what they have never experienced”
― Sir David Attenborough

The above quote seems apt considering that we have just celebrated (globally) one of my all time hero’s 100th birthday. I believe this to be true, we are responsible for what is happening to our planet and I’ve been looking ways to use my printmaking to help people connect with nature and I have been thinking a lot about the countless people out there that that are already doing everything they can to look after it. From scientists, conservationists and natural historians to ordinary people keeping their own records and taking part in citizen science, feeding their visiting birds and offering them welcome spaces to feed, nest and breed.

I’m recently back from a visiting one of my other heroes, Dr. Paula Whyte (née Cox), who is a retired Ecological Consultant and has been involved in nature conservation pretty much all of her adult life. She is also my mum and inspiration, here she is with me and my step-dad Ian (also a keen birdwatcher). It was a pleasure to see, amongst other things, Choughs, White Throats, Linnets, Swallows, Swifts, House Martins, Whimbrels, Reed Warblers and even a Peregrine Falcon (at Cape Cornwall).

As I write, the countryside around me seems to have burst into life and, despite the damp weather, flowers are blooming, birds are flitting about and there’s a feeling of growth and busyness everywhere. It has been a mixture of happiness and concern for many of us as we await the return of some of our errant regulars and fret about the safety of eggs and chicks as our birds commence breeding.

House Martins building nests on our house in 2025

Whilst Sally and I were visiting the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority (YDNPA) offices in Grassington to meet with Senior Wildlife Conservation Officer Ian Court (about a Ring Ouzel archive, more on that another day), we were discussing all things birds. I told him about our lovely colony of House Martins that have been nesting annually on the terraced houses in our lane. Last year Yorkshire Water’s inability to mend a water leak for twelve months(!) meant that they had a great supply of puddles during the dry spell and were able to mend and reenforce existing nests whilst building new ones.

Unfortunately it is now 21st May and our House Martins are overdue. Although I’ve seen quite a few elsewhere, there are just a couple in the vicinity. According to posts on the Facebook group, House Martin Conservation UK & Ireland, this is something that is a widespread concern and many are wondering if our unpredictable weather patterns with recent cold and wet spells has affected their migration.

This reminded me of something Ian said at one of our first meetings about Cherish. I am paraphrasing here but he pointed out that in the YDNPA we have very little control over what is happening globally to our migratory species. They are affected in the countries they winter in and travel through by everything from hunting, change of land use, war and climate change. He emphasised how important it is for the YDNPA to protect the habitats they return to, ensure that we have the right plants growing that support them (and the invertebrates many of them feed on) and to provide them with suitable and safe nesting sites. These are all things that are considered in the Nature Recovery Plan and part of the reason that Sally and I are celebrating what we have here and why we should cherish it.

Stonechat, Mistle Thrush and Meadow Pipit

Through my own experiences and research and the research at the Dales Countryside Museum archives (and The Folly Museum), I have formed a much bigger picture of just how strong, varied and often complicated our relationship with birds is and has been since the beginning of human existence and I aim to explore that in future posts. In the meantime, let’s keep our fingers crossed that the House Martins return to those of us still waiting and let’s give them a warm welcome. For information about the YDNPA’s Homes for Housebirds project, clock HERE

World Curlew Day

Posted on April 21, 2026 by hestercoxprintmaker

‘…of all the birds the curlew best expresses the untamed spirit of this northern country where the fells merge imperceptibly into the narrow valleys’. Marie Hartley and Ella Pontefract, Yorkshire Cottage (1941)

This post is all about the the Eurasian Curlew (Numenius Arquata). This iconic bird has become so endangered that, thanks to Mary Colwell founder of Curlew Action, it now has its own day on the 21st April in the hope of raising awareness of the need for us all to step up and take action to prevent it’s beautiful bubbling cry becoming a distant memory. So please join me in celebrating this beautiful wader that comes to the Yorkshire Dales each year to breed.

The curlew is one of my favourite birds and I have made many prints of them over the years. I’m currently working on Cherish which is a joint project celebrating priority bird species found in the Yorkshire Dales National Park and I will be including the curlew amongst my flock of lapwings, ring ouzels, mistle thrushes, swifts, house martins, merlins, skylarks and many more.

Through my research in the archives at the Dales Countryside Museum (and also a day at The Folly Museum), one thing that has become clear is the joy that the curlew has brought to so many people over the years.

Curlew on Nest, photo taken by Richard Keaton and published in Kearton’s Nature Pictures (courtesy of the Dales Countryside Museum Archive)

Richard Kearton wrote in Kearton’s Nature Pictures (1910) ‘The common curlew is in my opinion the most magnificent and interesting wader that breeds in the British Isles…’ he continues to describe growing up in North Yorkshire and and wandering ‘amongst the solitude of the Yorkshire moors within sound of its noble voice and I never hear the birds thrilling notes again without having my soul stirred to ecstasies within me’.

An older collagraph that I made when I moved to Horton-in-Ribblesdale and realised that curlews nested just metres from my house.

William (Bill) Mitchell, author and long time editor of The Dalesman wrote in his book A Few Million Birds (1971) ‘Curlew was the first bird to thrill me as a toddler’ and I am repeating his description here because I cannot describe one better ‘I saw a curlew breasting the wind like a feathered kite. It had climbed high with a few vigorous wing-beats and began to glide, slowly cooing, then bursting forth with a bubbling aria. When it came to earth again it perched on the capstone of a wall and I can see it now—a tall and graceful silhouette, its 5-inch bill gleaming like a sabre in the strong light and the wild Pennine moors stretching all around’.

A lovely photo of a curlew on a drystone wall (taken by Brian Stallwood)

From the Bill Shorrock Archive at The Folly Museum, the archivists found me a rare copy of Shorrock’s book Birds of Settle (1987). Under the entry for the curlew, Shorrock says ‘From July to October moulting flocks gather in the Ribble Valley and at Malham Tarn Moss. On the latter site P. F. Holmes recorded up to three thousand birds in August and September during the 1950s. Present day numbers rarely reach five hundred – the Ribble Valley up until 1975 normally reached a peak of two thousand birds in September. Since 1975 a decrease has taken place – eight hundred is the usual maximum’.

My 2025 collagraph, Midsummer Moon, inspired by a midsummer even spent listening to curlew from the buttresses of Pen-y-Ghent.

The decline of curlew populations due to various changes to the countryside is tragic. Curlew Action say that the numbers in Ireland have decreased by 90%, Wales by 80% and 60 % throughout England and Scotland. Conservation groups across Europe are working tirelessly to try and turn this around and many individuals (including me) are trying to raise awareness, and funding to help make possible the work they are doing. In conserving the curlew, we not only ensure that our children and their children will have the pleasure of seeing this beautiful bird, we are also improving conditions for other species. On World Curlew Day you couldn’t do better than exploring all the information and links at Curlew Action HERE

July, a linocut celebrating the successful fledging of curlew chicks from my neighbour’s meadows.

Ending on a positive story…in July of 2023, I was delighted to witness the successful fledging of four curlew chicks in my neighbours meadows. They had cut the hay but left a wide margin of meadowsweet and other plants along the wall-line and the curlew chicks were able to stay out of harms way. Brian and I were able to see them all flying about with the parents keeping watch from the wall tops. The following day they were gone and we guessed that they had set off for to their wintering grounds together.

Many Happy Returns!!

Posted on March 19, 2026 by hestercoxprintmaker

Spring feels like it is finally here and, thanks to Ryedale Folk Museum, I have discovered that my birthday – 12th of March – which I knew was St. Gregory’s Day, is also known in the folk calendar as Bird Day and is the day that “people started watching for signs of spring returning from our feathered friends – listening out for songbirds, looking for them making their nests. It was also the day that birds were said to choose a mate“. My post today is about the joy many of us feel from observing bird behaviour as the flowers start to bloom and we begin to feel a little warmth from the sun.

Yesterday I drove over to the Dales Countryside Museum to do some more research in the archives for Cherish and I spent all day getting lost in books written in the latter part of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. I found myself following chains of information about the extraordinary people who still speak to us through the centuries because of their extensive knowledge and interest in natural history.

My head is full and I feel inspired and, all the while, the Yorkshire Dales are coming alive with birds as they come out of their winter quietude to fill the air with song. The happiest moments are when I see flocks of waders returning from their winter retreats and most notably the call of the first curlew heard near my studio in Horton-in-Ribblesdale (20th February).

Illustration from the museum’s copy of Keartons’ Nature Pictures Vol 2 (Cassel 1910)

In the second volume of Keartons’ Nature Pictures (Cassel 1910), Richard Kearton says of the curlew ‘for upwards of twenty years I lived and wandered amongst the solitudes of the Yorkshire moors within sound of its noble voice, and I never hear the bird’s thrilling notes without having my soul stirred and my spirits lifted’.

Photo showing a ring ouzel, a flock of golden plover, skylark, lapwing, curlew and a pair of dippers. Photos taken by Hester Cox. — Photos of birds I’ve seen in the last month. The ring ouzel is from last year because this year’s photo was terrible (I hope to get some better ones)

It is a lovely thing to be completely on your own and yet find yourself exclaiming aloud with joy at the song of the skylark or the sight of a flock of returning waders. One of my highlights from the last few weeks was on 8th March when I decided to have a run up Plover Hill and Pen-y-Ghent to see if the golden plover had returned and on the way I detoured for a quick look at Hull Pot:

It was an overcast and unpromising day but as I looked to see if anything was in it, I saw a flash of black and white and to my surprise, a ring ouzel was flitting about above it! I was able to watch it descend into Hull Pot and sit on a branch. It proceeded to fly in and out until a bunch of excited young men came over to admire this geological spectacle and it flew away (I’ve since been back and spent forty five minutes hiding in sedge being bothered by gnats whilst I could hear one calling nearby but never actually saw it).

With a happy heart and buoyed along by the singing of skylarks, I continued to the summit of Plover Hill where, sure enough, I caught sight of a large flock of birds flying and then settling on a drystone wall in the mist. I crept along, keeping low to avoid scaring them, and as I was doing so I discovered that the heather was littered with beautiful golden barred feathers. I didn’t have to get too close to see that there was a flock of around sixty of these stunning waders and every now and then I could hear the little plaintive cry which I always associate with the upper fells.

Ella Pontefract and Marie Hartley described them in their book, Yorkshire Cottage (1942): they haunt particular stretches of the moor, where they will stand motionless on rock or tufts of heather for long periods. Aloof and handsome in their golden plumage, they might be called the aristocrats of the moor. Just as their plumage loses itself in the heather and bents, so their melancholy whistling note might be the wind of the crags.

I’m now off to the studio to do some thinking and drawing. Tomorrow I plan to cycle up beyond Ribblehead to the place that I saw lapwings displaying to each on my drive home from the museum. Happy days!

NB I would love to hear anyone’s memories of birds in the Yorkshire Dales and particularly any thoughts about declining population numbers, you can leave me a note here or contact me through my website, thank you: https://www.hestercox.com.

Exploring Birdlife in the Yorkshire Dales: Stories and Conservation

Posted on February 5, 2026 by hestercoxprintmaker

Lapwing encountered near the side of the road in Silverdale

Yesterday I spent a happy few hours in the archive at the Dales Countryside Museum (DCM). I’m carrying out research for Cherish which explores the history and celebrates priority species birds in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. I’m looking back at various books and accounts where the authors talk about their experiences of birds in the dales and I started with the diaries of Marie Hartley and continued to the books of Richard Kearton (1862-1928) (illustrated with his brother Cherry’s (1871-1940) gorgeous monochrome photographs).

Richard and Cherry Kearton were naturalists and pioneers of nature photography. They were born and brought up in the Yorkshire Dales at Thwaite in Swaledale. For more information about their fascinating lives see this blog HERE

I began by looking at Birds’ Nests, Eggs and Egg Collecting which was published in 1890 and revised in 1896. Richard says “this book is not intended to encourage the useless collecting of birds’ eggs from a mere bric-à-brac motive, but to aid the youthful naturalist in the study of one of the most interesting phases of birdlife” and he goes on to share his ideas and philosophical approach to studying birds and their reproductive behaviour. In it he provides guidance on the subject of egg collecting and preserving and provides information about the nesting behaviour and eggs of individual species . He states that he hopes “that the Act of Parliament empowering County Councils to protect either the eggs of certain birds, or all birds breeding within a given area, will be of great benefit to our feathered friends”.

Egg collecting was a regular past-time for naturalists during the nineteenth and early twentieth century and many children growing up in the Yorkshire Dales in the 1940s and 1950s may well have spent time doing so too. With this pastime often came the kind of general knowledge of nature and the landscape that has been lost amongst many of our current generation which is why I am encouraged by the recent successful campaign to instate a nationwide Natural History GSCE in schools.

Plate from *Birds’ Nests, Eggs and Egg Collecting*

The Protection of Birds Act 1954 made egg collecting generally illegal but there was also an earlier bill, The Protection of Lapwings Bill 1928, that I find particularly interesting. Lapwings are one of my selected birds for this project and I am very fortunate to see them fairly regularly. At one time they were abundant across the country, so much so that their eggs were taken in the thousands to sell as a culinary delight in London. In his book At Home With Wild Nature published in 1922, Richard Kearton says “I wish some epicure would try a boiled rook’s egg for breakfast and proclaim from the house-tops of Belgravia its superiority over that of the plover or lapwing. It would be a great boon to the latter bird, which is being slowly but surely exterminated, to the detriment of the farmer in particular, and the public in general”.

Kearton goes on to say “I have been an observer of bird life all my days, but never remember a time when members of the avian world were so purposefully persecuted as the present. It is no exaggeration to say that not quite ninety per cent of the nests, great and small, built in places accessible to public are wantonly destroyed”. He outlines his proposals to help protect birds in the preface of the book (see photos above).

I also read his thoughts on the rise in sheep farming and how he connected it to the decrease in the number of lapwings, wheatears and other moorland birds. I found a passage in which he also talks about “game-preserving” being a “disastrous business” to hen harriers. Coupled with the recent news of the successful prosecution of a game keeper who killed a hen harrier near Grassington, it is poignant that over a century later we are still encountering the same problems but they are now compounded by other threats to wildlife such as the rise in human populations and tourism, changes in agricultural practises and climate change.

Meeting Mary Colwell, Director of Curlew Action, at the Northern Curlew Skill Share in 2025

There’s a lot to do in order to help our precious wildlife which is why one of the highlights of 2025 for me was my participation in the Northern Curlew Skill Share event organised by Matthew Trevelyan of Nidderdale Natural Landscape. This brought together land owners, farmers, ecologists, artists, writers, poets (to name but a few interested parties) who shared the common goal of trying to pool resources and skills to help find ways to conserve the endangered Curlew. It reminded me of how it isn’t all ‘doom and gloom’ and that I can play a small part by raising awareness via my work. The YDNPA’s Nature Recovery Plan “sets out the Biodiversity Forum‘s aspirations for action between now and 2040, aiming to conserve and enhance the biodiversity within the National Park” and this, combined with the efforts of many individuals and groups across the Yorkshire Dales gives rise to hope that we can make a difference.

Should anybody reading this blog have their own memories of birds in the Yorkshire Dales that they would like to share, please do feel free to comment below or send me a message through my website HERE. I’d love to hear them.

Cherish – Celebrating Priority Bird Species in the Yorkshire Dales

Posted on January 7, 2026 by hestercoxprintmaker

As we begin 2026 and are dealing with the fluctuating winter weather across the country, my thoughts are turning to the project that I will be working on well into 2027. Cherish is the title and it will culminate in a joint exhibition with Sally Zaranko at the Dales Countryside Museum (DCM) in the summer of 2027. Using our own experience of the landscape, archival material from the museum and the Nature Recovery Plan for the Yorkshire Dales National Park (YDNPA), the project will celebrate the priority bird species that exist across the YDNP thanks to its varied and distinctive landscape.

*Bird’s Eye View*, collagraph print inspired by the cattle grazed area of Ingleborough Nature Reserve where bird’s eye primroses thrive in spring and wheatears, meadow pipits and skylarks nest.

The idea has been in the back of my mind since working on the DCM’s Ink Inspiration project celebrating the life and work of Marie Hartley, their founder. During my research, I came across an entry in one of her diaries in the museum archives (see below). It was from 1947 and listed all the birds that she had seen in the Askrigg area. What particularly drew me to the list was the corncrake. These birds are now only very rarely seen whilst on passage through the dales due to changes in land-use & farming practises making it unfavourable for their successful breeding. In fact, many of the birds that Marie saw regularly are now red or amber listed species and I made a print called Marie’s List in response to that idea (read more about that HERE)

Marie Hartley’s bird list as found ink one of her diaries in the DCM archive.

“The Nature Recovery Plan (NRP) for the Yorkshire Dales National Park sets out the Biodiversity Forum‘s aspirations for action between now and 2040, aiming to conserve and enhance the biodiversity within the National Park“

I have chosen a selection of birds from the Category A & B lists in the plan, birds that appear on Marie’s List and ones that I encounter myself within the Three Peaks Area of the Yorkshire Dales. I hope that through my research and subsequent print work, I will join Sally in celebrating the fact that the YDNP has significant populations of these species within the UK and to make links between the varied habitats that support them. Between us we will also be drawing on the personal experiences of birds by people living and working in the dales through the oral history project.

*Sumer is Icumen In*, collagraph print from *Charms and Murmurings*. The cuckoo is one of my selected birds for *Cherish*

Following on from Charms and Murmurings, I will be exploring some of the cultural history of birds through folklore, place names, vernacular bird names and historical records. It is exciting to have this time to become fully immersed in a subject that I have had a lifelong interest in thanks to my parents particularly my mother who, following her degree and phd in zoology as a mature student, became an ecological consultant. It is so nice to be able to draw on her vast knowledge (and library!) and to have the kind of conversations that spark new ideas for prints.

Corbie, bran, cigfran…AKA the Raven!

Posted on October 28, 2025 by hestercoxprintmaker

Ravens have captivated me for most of my life and I am fortunate to live in an area where I see them often. When I summit Ingleborough there will invariably be a pair flying around and I see them when I am running over Plover Hill and Pen-y-ghent. These intelligent members of the corvid (crow) family are also the largest and the ones that feature most in the folklore and mythology of cultures from all over the world. (Below are just a few photos I’ve taken over the years, note the difference in size between the raven and the crow in the last photo!).

For Charms and Murmurings at Ryedale Folk Museum – my latest Collections exhibition with Josie Beszant & Charlotte Morrison – we are showing work inspired by the folklore, mythology and stories surrounding birds. Ravens feature in many of our pieces including our collaborative work ‘Corvid’. I made a template showing the primary and secondary wing feathers of a raven and we each made fourteen feathers that, when collected together, formed a pair of ‘wings’. I love the distinctive primaries on a raven’s wing that look like fingers stroking the sky.

The three of us at the opening of Charms and Murmurings
(l-r: Charlotte, Josie, me)

My collagraph feathers are inspired by the many places throughout Yorkshire that are named after ravens and also the Norse myth of Odin and his two ravens, Huginn & Muninn (Charlotte’s feathers are ceramic and Josie’s are paper collages).

Ravens are carrion eaters and, because of this, they were often associated with death and loss. They are also ‘talking birds’ that are able to mimic human speech and this is thought to be the reason that they appear as messengers in so many myths, often travelling between worlds, to bring news to their human companions. Back in 2000, I created a raven collagraph inspired by Celtic mythology and called The Messenger:

25 years later(!) I have chosen to explore the story of Odin’s ravens and for Charms and Murmurings I have created this piece entitled Thought and Memory:

Huginn (Thought) and Muninn (Mind or Memory) would sit beside Odin – often regarded as the God of Ravens, the dead and warfare – and each morning he sent them out across the world and they would report back on everything they saw and heard. The names of the ravens are difficult to translate but Huginn is thought to represent the intellect/comprehension/perception and Muninn the emotions/memory/urges (to put it very simply). Whilst researching ravens, I came across an article that referenced a quote from the Poetic Edda called Grímnismál (in old Icelandic):

Huginn ok Muninn fljúga hverjan dag Jormungrund yfir;

óumk ek of Hugin, at hann aptr né komit, pó sjámk meirr um Munin.

A translation of this is:

Thought and Memory fly every day the whole world over;

each day I fear that Thought may not return, yet I fear more for Memory.

This really resonated with me and, coming at the idea from an ecological viewpoint, I wanted to depict Thought (Huginn) as living in the natural world that we see and experience physically and I have used the branches of an ash tree which directly links to the sacred ash tree (Yggdrasil) in Norse myth. I’ve created moths to fly among the branches symbolising thoughts and the spirit.

For Memory (Muninn), I depicted the roots of an ash tree with fossils caught amongst them representing the past, our memories and the underworld realm of the dead. The fact that Odin was an elderly man and that he feared losing Muninn more than Huginn made me think about the devastating disease of dementia. Losing our cognitive ability and short-term memories, we become lost in our own world unable to make sense of the here and now and often become physically lost both to our families and friends but also in reality when we can’t find the associations needed to navigate in the world around us. I am not really sure how this collagraph relates to my thoughts but I made it with them whirring around in the background.

NB some people believe that Huginn and Muninn were linked to Odin himself and that through shamanic practices he would send his own thought and mind journeying across the world. Ravens have often been a bird that humans and mythic beings were thought to transform into.

As is usual with my work, there are layers of thought behind it and some I won’t be able to verbalise for a while (there is something about ‘ash dieback’ in there I think!). I often create my prints from ideas that are more instinctive and come from experiences that link to things I feel but haven’t found a way to express in words. This is why I love to meet people at art fairs and discuss my work with them. At the Saltaire Inspired Winter Makers Fair last weekend, I had some wonderful discussions about my new work and found that visitors were providing insights that made me feel like shouting ‘yes, yes, that’s it!’.

Finally, this last piece is part of my ‘animal, vegetable, mineral’ series that takes my feather collection as inspiration and links to manmade objects and the plant world. Here I have created collagraphs of a raven feather, a sprig of bog myrtle (sweet gale) and a piece of Viking hack silver which is actually from a former project. Bog Myrtle is thought to be a plant that the vikings used to create a drink which helped them ‘berserk’ before going into battle! There is an interesting article about the varied uses of the plant HERE.

Thank you to everyone that has visited the exhibition and for all of your feedback. I welcome your ideas and experiences about birds, folklore and my work so please do feel free to comment below.

Charms and Murmurings is on at Ryedale Folk Museum until 2nd November.

Cuckoo! Cuckoo!

Posted on October 1, 2025 by hestercoxprintmaker

Gawk, Gawk, Gawky, Gog, Gok, Hobby and Welsh Ambassador are all names for the Common Cuckoo, a bird synonymous with so many different superstitions and folklore that it is hard to know where to start! For me it is very much a bird that heralds the coming of spring. I often hear one calling from a small copse near the quarry in Horton-in-Ribblesdale in April.

The migratory cuckoo flies to the UK from North Africa and is only with us for a short time but has given its name to many things including a number of plants. There are lots of cuckoo flowers including cardamine pratensis (aka lady’s smock) and lychnis flos-cuculi (aka ragged robin). Cuckoo Bread is another name for wood-sorrel, cuckoo buttons for spear thistle, cuckoo boots for bluebell and cuckoo’s eye for herb robert to name just a few.

For Charms and Murmurings at Ryedale Folk Museum, I have based two prints on the cuckoo. Here is the first:

This three plate collagraph depicts the cuckoo itself, two ‘cuckoo flowers’ and a cuckoo feather and it gains its title from the Medieval English round ‘Sumer is Icumen in‘. This is also known as the Summer Canon or the Cuckoo Song and roughly translates as ‘summer has come’.

Cuckoos are well-known for being ‘brood parasites’ which means that they don’t build their own nests and, once mated, the female lays her eggs in the nest of another bird such as a meadow pipit or dunnock. It is believed that the cuckoo’s resemblance to a bird of prey helps to frighten the host bird away from the nest allowing the cuckoo the opportunity to lay her egg. She can lay up to 25 eggs in different nests of her chosen species (they usually have a preferred host) and will replace one of the bird’s existing eggs with hers. The baby cuckoo develops very quickly and, on hatching, often kicks out the remaining eggs or hatched chicks from the nest. The host will then raise her huge alien baby as her own.

Maybe because of this unusual behaviour, the cuckoo has also become a bird associated with fertility, infidelity and lasciviousness. The word cuckold describes the husband of an adulterous wife who might unwittingly raise a child from that union as his own. It is linked directly to the cuckoo and appears frequently in the works of Shakespeare. Gowk is one of my ‘animal vegetable, mineral’ collagraph prints:

For this series I have taken feathers from my feather collection (it is extensive!) or referenced an online feather library for the animal part. The vegetable part depicts a plant and the mineral is based on a real or imagined manmade object. In this case we have an undertail covert cuckoo feather, arum maculatum (aka cuckoo pint) and a pottery sherd from a Delft birthplate. Cuckoo Pint gains its name from the word ‘pintle’ which is an old English word for penis and the fact that somebody once thought it resembled a cuckoo’s penis. I’ve always known it as Lords and Ladies but apparently that too is a rather suggestive name with it originally being written as Lord’s and Lady’s because someone thought the plant resembled the genitalia of both sexes! With regards to the plate, I have two sisters and my mum commissioned a plate for each of our births. The traditional blue and white Delftware had our names, birth dates and the time of our birth was shown on the clock. If you want to see what the whole plate looks like, they are still in production, an example can be seen here. I created a collagraph/drypoint pottery sherd as my artefact just showing a part of the cradle.

These are just two approaches to the stories surrounding the amazing cuckoo. Celebrated in festivals across the country, some believed that turning a coin in your pocket on hearing a cuckoo would bring good fortune whilst others thought the cuckoo’s habits could determine the outcome of the year’s harvest. There’s a lovely blog post by Jo Woolf in Argyll where you can read about more beliefs here

In my next post I will be talking all about the raven. If you’d like to see my work and the lovely pieces made by Josie Beszant and Charlotte Morrison, you can visit our exhibition at Ryedale Folk Museum until 2nd November 2025.

Join Us for Bird Lore and Meet the Artist Events

Posted on September 17, 2025 by hestercoxprintmaker

Since 2015, I have been working with artist Josie Beszant and ceramicist Charlotte Morrison on a project called Collections. We have been exploring the human urge to collect—why we gather, what we choose to preserve, and how objects can hold memory, meaning, and emotion. We have been developing our work through a series of exhibitions and residencies, including partnerships with museums and galleries. Eight years after our first collaboration with Ryedale Folk Museum, we were delighted to be invited back with an exhibition of new work called Charms and Murmurings.

The exhibition opens this weekend with two events at the museum – Bird Lore with Sally Coultard and Friends takes place from 11.30 – 12.30 when Josie and I will be chatting to the best selling local author and newly appointed patron of the museum about her latest book and our exhibition, both of which explore the fascinating folklore of birds. For more information and to book a place, click HERE

In the afternoon, Charlotte, Josie and I will be at the museum gallery from 2-4pm in a Meet the Artist event. We will be chatting to visitors and answering questions about our new work.

The exhibition continues until 2 November 2025 and over the coming weeks I will be writing about the collagraphs that I have made and the stories behind them. I hope you will join me in exploring the different birds that are loved and feared in our folktales and embedded in our language, place names, and traditions.

Celebrating Meadows and Curlews! Two exhibitions to enjoy this summer.

Posted on July 24, 2024 by hestercoxprintmaker

It has been a long time since I wrote anything but I have plans for ‘short and sweet’ in future so that maybe, just maybe I’ll write more often than once every year! This post is just to let everyone know that I have two exhibitions on at the moment.

I’m absolutely delighted that Within These Walls has a new venue. The Folly is an old and fascinating building housing the Museum of North Craven Life and also the award-winning The Folly Coffee House! My hangings are gracing the upper stair well and the rest of my project is exhibited in the top floor gallery space. The museum is at Victoria Street, Settle, North Yorkshire, BD24 9EY and is open:
Tuesday – Saturday and bank holiday Mondays, 11:00am to 4:00pm (last admission 3:30pm)
The Folly Coffee House is open:
Monday-Saturday 10:00am to 4:00pm

The other exhibition is a fabulous project called Cry of the Curlew coordinated by Paco Valera and Barbara Murray whose photos and poetry document the plight of the iconic curlews of the Yorkshire Dales. As a longterm curlew admirer and campaigner, I am delighted to exhibit my collagraphs and Migration series prints in this important exhibition that has been previously been shown at the Dales Countryside Museum.

Here’s what Kendal Museum has to say:

The beauty and fragility of Curlews is highlighted through the stunning photography of Paco Valera and insightful prose-poetry by Barbara Murray. Inspiring artwork is on display by Sally Zaranko, Hester Cox, Judith Bromley, and Robert Nicholls, alongside the wire sculptures of Stephanie Smith. Swedish artists Emily Berry Mennerdahl and Jonas Böttern of Hillside Projects present work symbolising ecological collapse. A video and soundscape by June Gersten-Roberts features interviews with farmers on sustainability, along with Alastair McIntosh’s poem, Extinction set to the music of Loriana Pauli. A new watercolour work by Dr William Titley of In-Situ beautifully maps ‘The Curlew Way,’ as part of his Walking with Landscape project. A wonderful display by Curlew Recovery South Lakes will demonstrate the vital work they are doing to protect nests and support the delicate local population of these beautiful birds, as well as sharing ways you can get involved.

I’ll be taking a well-earned break in Scotland in August but when I return in September I will be starting new work celebrating some of our priority bird species of the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

Within These Walls: Hay Time in the Dales

Posted on May 9, 2023 by hestercoxprintmaker

My print installation, Within These Walls, created for a field barn at Grassington Festival in 2017 displayed with a hay sled.

After seven and half months of intensive work on my calendar linocuts, five new monotypes and a new collagraph, my exhibition at the Dales Countryside Museum is open and I’m delighted with how it looks. Fiona and her team have chosen an array of artefacts that were used for haymaking in the Yorkshire Dales along with a wonderful archive of oral histories and photographs of the Irish workers that came over to Yorkshire each year to help with Hay Time.

You can watch two films at the exhibition: one is an introduction to my studio with a collagraph printing demonstration and the other is the 2 minute film Paul Harris created of my installation in the barn.

There are also cabinets with some of Marie Hartley’s original wood engraving blocks, and the prints that I made from them, showing scenes from hay making in the 1930s. I started this project back in 2014 when I moved to Horton-in-Ribblesdale and began walking a footpath through and past three local meadows. Throughout the year I observed the rhythm of sheep farming, the change of the seasons and accompanying weather conditions in the meadows. I was able to observe the many different species of plant that grew and the visiting wildlife to the meadows. It became apparent that they were really good examples of species-rich traditionally managed meadows and I began drawing the plants and making prints of the wildlife that came to them.

Over the years, I’ve become familiar with the meadows across the Yorkshire Dales and interested in ‘nature friendly farming’. This exhibition celebrates the ecological diversity of healthy hay meadows as well as their agricultural and cultural history with the hope that visitors can enjoy and understand the contemporary importance of these wonderful landscapes.

The exhibition runs until the 17th September 2023 and is open daily, 10am – 5pm. Entry to the exhibition is included in the museum admission fee:

Adults £4.90
Concessions (60s and over): £4.40
Under 16s: FREE
Carers: FREE

You can buy tickets on entry or plan your visit by clicking to book online HERE

Hester Cox: Printmaker

Thoughts from Hester's printmaking studio and beyond.