And summer's lease hath all to short a date

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. 

Red Admiral

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. 

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.

 Forest shield bugs mating

The blackbirds are fledging their second broods of the year.

Young hen blackie

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  It is all hustle and bustle, the lazy days of summer exist only in song and time is passing.