It is 2105 hours and yet again the weather has gone sour and rain lashes down. It’s almost autumnal. It was pointed out to me a few days ago when Sheila and I were travelling along the southern part of the Lincolnshire Wolds (that part which extends into Cambridgeshire) the tree foliage was fading to yellow and brown. This was not only alongside the road but also deeper into the woodlands of that area (near Peterborough).
Also, now that I come to consider, Starlings are flocking in urban areas ready to take the rural plunge for winter feeding. Swallows and Martins are lining the telephone cables (where there are any left these days) and seem to be preparing for migration. Crows, Rooks and Jackdows in mixed flocks are starting to find roosting trees away from urbanisation too..
I looked back into some of my daily journals for the late ’90’s and find that I was commenting on such behaviour then BUT, in middle to late September. In our area farmers have already finished ‘hay making’ and its attendant rituals of ploughing, harrowing and now an early winter grain crop has been sown. Generally wheat I’m reliable informed by one aquaintance who says that he hopes to harvest by December and replant for a spring cropping too.
I do like the autumnal times but not in August. Late october and then for the remainder of the year I like the darker nights and shorter days when good things can be done in the quiet and comfort of a cosy home. Jam and chutney making, bread baking, generally things that our forebears would have done to prepare for the (then) long cold barren months. I love a howling gale scything across the flat fens, rattling windows, loose guttering and the ubiquitious corrugated iron. Sitting before a roaring log fire sipping some warm elderberry wine and staring into the flaming caves and tunnels of the inferno is something I value as part of my heritage.
It’s definitely too early in the year to be thinking these thoughts. I have many more nights pitched in some quiet corner to contemplate first.
Cheers and good night.
Filed under: Autum, Backpacking, Miscellaneous, Miscellany, bird flocking, fens, locations, reminisiences, winter | Tagged: Add new tag, crows, birds, winter, autumn, swallows, martins, rooks, jackdaws, crops, heritage
The geese that visit the Ouse flood plain are back this year – but we have noticed that they are now arriving two to three weeks earlier than when we moved here eight years ago. Could it be that when we arrived here eight years ago they were a few weeks late? We don’t think so as we both believe that they are arriving earlier each year.
Its wonderful to hear them fly over in the deeper dusk – a squeeking flight with their melodic honks.