Summer is drawing to
a close. The swallows are still here but the days are getting
shorter and the winds have an autumnal feel. The fields have a shorn look as the combines gather the grain and the balers leave the
giant rolls of straw to be picked up later on the prongs of a tractor.
No chance of boys making forts out of these as we did with the
man-handled bales of my childhood.
Yesterday, I had my
first bramble from the hedgerow, a sure sign of autumn and the sloes
are just taking on their bluish tinge. Next week it will be St
Philbert's day when, traditionally, the young hazel nuts, the
filberts, are edible though we are too far north. It will be a week
or two yet before ours are ready.
I visited Pease Dean and Duns Castle reserves to try out a new app on the I-pod.
It is a bird song identifier.You record the song
and then ask for a match from the songs on the app. It works fairly
well. It quickly and accurately identified the test subjects
...goldfinches, wrens, blackbirds etc but the thirty-second
recording time means that you have to try over and over because,
birds being birds, they will stop singing or calling just after
you've pressed “record” and start again after the thirty seconds
are up! It was less efficient with calls such as the buzzard
circling over head. I suppose the wind noise distorted the recording.
Still, a useful tool for the bird watcher.
Butterflies are
everywhere. Their presence, just seeing them, seems to make life a
bit more pleasant. They will be getting their eggs laid and it is a
great excuse not to be too tidy a gardener. Nettles? ...Oh, I leave
them for the butterflies.
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| Red Admiral |
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| Peacock butterfly |
Unfortunately, the
ride-on lawn mower has induced people to extend their mowing
operations down the verges from their houses, farms and caravan sites
for long distances, creating neat, barren strips of turf and further
reducing the availability of weeds and seeds necessary for our wild
life.
The insect world is
getting its breeding done before the winter takes its toll. The
bumble bee queens will be looking for a nest to overwinter with next
year's generation in their abdomens while the rest, their jobs done,will
die.
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| A buff tailed bumble bee queen is impregnated |
The forest shield
bugs will lay their eggs in cracks in the bark of oak trees ready for
next spring.
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| Forest shield bugs mating |
The blackbirds are
fledging their second broods of the year.
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| Young hen blackie |
It is all hustle and
bustle, the lazy days of summer exist only in song and time is
passing.
