Fading Towards Autumn

Catch up – this time with the changing seasons dating from the 04 September 2013.

After a long summer of sunshine and heat, the vegetation of the Scottish Borders was beginning to tell a tale of hard times and had a distinctive look of tiredness to it. An evening wander round Lindean Reservoir didn’t tell a different tale, but highlighted the changes that were going on all around. Here the grasslands had changed from the various greens of summer that were spotted with masses of colours to a scene of varying browns with just one or two spots of colour from the remaining late summer flowers. These colours came from a few Knapweed flowers that produced splashes of purples accompanied by the occasional white inflorescence from Sneezewort and Yarrow. Just a few examples remaining to remind us of the glories of the summer that had begun to fade and head towards the changes of autumn.

The glories of the autumn that was coming, were already visible in some of the surrounding trees. The leaves of a number had already begun to change from the dark greens associated with summer to the browns and oranges of autumn. Furthest advanced were those of the Rowan, who were already well on the way to an autumnal paper brown, a colour that was highlighted by a heavy crop of bright orange-red berries, so that each tree was like a beacon of orange against the tired greens and browns of the grasses.

The Setting Sun Across Lindean Reservoir – 04 September 2013 (Copyright Carol Jones)

As I’ve mentioned before the approach of autumn means that sunsets become much more accessible as they come at sensible times in the evening, and my early September trip to Lindean Reservoir was not to disappoint on this front. As the sun continued its journey towards the horizon, the final rays of the days sunlight caught touches of cloud that were sitting just above the horizon and began to warm them into a gentle orange. As the sun dropped lower in the sky the clouds began to thicken and the reds continued to warm into a fiery blaze, changing into a cauldron of colour so that the clouds looked as though they had caught fire and were ablaze in the heavens, before fading rapidly into the darkness of night.

The Cauldron of Fire Above the Three Brethren – 04 September 2013 (Copyright Carol Jones)

Bath Time

Catch up – this time dating from the 25 August 2013

As I’ve said before the activities of the birds around our bird table and feeders is great entertainment and to some degree has many repeating themes, in much the same way as the TV daytime soaps do but of course they are much more interesting. In this episode, the local population of House Sparrows take the starring roles.

House Sparrows are very sociable birds that love to do things together. In some ways they remind me of a bunch of teenagers that like to hang out on street corners. Their equivalent to a street corner is our garden hedge and they are often found in some numbers sitting within it, twittering to each other, where with time the levels of twittering chit chat increases, sometimes to almost deafening levels and where squabbles are not unknown. This day they were sat in the hedge, chirping and squabbling gently, as is their way, with individuals wandering out to feed on the nuts or head to the seed feeder, where they tend to throw out all but their favourite titbit. When at some point it seemed as though a group decision was made that the main active of the day was to take a bath, and six of them headed to the bird bath for a group splash around.

House Sparrow Bath Time – 25 August 2013 (Copyright Carol Jones)

At this point the bird bath exploded into a mass of water and feathers, with droplets flying in all directions, as the House Sparrows splashed about. It is hard to believe that birds the size of House Sparrows could send so much water flying in so many directions, without their feathers following as well. In the end the result of water and feathers flying, were that the House Sparrows all became well wet and soggy, and ended up sitting looking like bedraggled balls of feathers that slowly fluffed out as they dried.

Great Balls of Fire

Catch up again – this blog dates from the 12 August 2013.

Summer might still be here at this point but the evenings had begun to draw in enough to make star gazing a viable option for the evenings, especially so as the nights were not yet bitterly cold.

This evening the sky was beautiful clear and as it was also supposed to be the best evening to see the Perseids Meteor Shower, so we’d headed out in hope if nothing else to view a bright pass of the Space Station that was due. As usual we gone down the road to our favourite viewing spot, which has good open views to the south. Here while we were waiting for the Space Station to rise, we watched as the stars began to appear in the darkening sky, more each minute as the sky darkened. Then suddenly there was this ball of flames that seemed to shoot out of nowhere and streaked across the sky, like a flaming gob-stopper. I felt that I should have ducked and shielded myself from the searing flames coming off of this meteor, but of course I didn’t and there wasn’t any heat anyway. Instead I just stood there entranced as it passed rapidly over head and burnt up in the atmosphere. Wow! Have to say that until that point the number of meteor’s I’ve seen could be counted on one hand, and all of those were nothing more than shooting pin pricks of light, nothing as amazing or as bright as this was!

While still recovering from the sight of the meteor, the Space Station rose, as they say time and tide wait for no man or woman and the Space Station wasn’t going to wait for me to regain my equilibrium. This evening though must have been one of those occasions when sights where set to be awe inspiring, for this night’s passage was to be one of the brightest passes I’ve seen. Rising from the south west where it brightened slowly to its full brightness, much brighter than any of the stars tonight, moving ever onwards across the sky, it passed overhead and then slowly dulled into eclipse as it moved into the south eastern sky, before eventually disappearing from sight.

It was really a very beautiful night out, the sky was clear and the stars bright, with the wonderful splurge of the Milky Way, clearly visible and for me a new constellation as I tried to learn the stars of Hercules. To me Hercules seems to be a strange stick-like man as though draw by a child, and running across the sky like the Roman mythological hero that this constellation is named after. While looking at stars there were more meteors from the Perseids Shower shooting across the sky, all of these were small and nothing more than pin pricks of light shooting across the heavens. Distracting all the same and in no more than five minutes the number of meteors I’d seen in my life had gone from a handful to double figures and beyond. Wow!!

Creatures From the Moss

The next few blogs cover the catch up period of late summer and early autumn, between my return from North Wales and now in mid-autumn. This one dates from the 08 August.

Walking round the edge of Blackpool Moss, it was wonderful to see the bright new greens of the moss, after the browning, tiredness of the surrounding areas which are slowly being baked in the heat of the summer. Here on the moss, it’s as though the sprinklers have been turned on every day to supply a dose of water; as all the vegetation has a spring newness to its colour, just like the lawns in suburbia. Out of this brightness there sprouted a number of Wild Angelica plants with their white frothy umbels that are tinged very slightly with pink, standing out as sentinels in this sea of green. More statuesque though, was a tussock of Greater Tussock Sedge that poked out of the surrounding vegetation like a weird creature with some form of bottle brush hair style. Well named by a friend, who called them Dr Who monsters!!

Blackpool Moss – 08 August 2013 (Copyright Carol Jones)

Surrounding this island of green, the grassland is browning and drying in preparation to be turned to hay, but amongst this brown there stands out a bright bank of purple, formed from a mass of Knapweed flowers. There were so many flowers that it was as if someone had taken a paint brush, dipped it in a paint pot and added a splash of colour across the grassland. This bank of flowers were also a great temptation to a mass of butterflies, the most I’ve seen this year in one place at anyone time. They were mainly Meadow Browns, flitting here and there, around the mass of flowers producing a mass of movement. Try as I might they did not settle for long enough to photo, all attempts at pictures where nothing more than a blur of movement, made worse by the gentle breeze that would set the heads of the Knapweed off in a swaying pattern all of their own.

Purple Edgings – 08 August 2013 (Copyright Carol Jones)

Mysterious Seas

This is the twelfth blog from my time in North Wales, dating from the 18 July 2013.

Sitting writing this final entry to my summer holiday blogs with autumn now upon on us, with mornings that now have a decided chill to them, and trees showing distinctive signs of yellowing, it is hard to imagine that in mid July it was necessary to head up into the hills to escape the heat of the day, as the sun would beat down with unforgiving relentlessness.

For this final day we took to the hills to the west of Bala to escape the unrelenting heat and found this spot where the views across to Rhinogs were amazing. Stopping close to the top of a ridge and looking out across the valley, the Rhinogs stood silhouetted, broodingly dark against the brightness of the summer blue sky.

The Rhinogs – 18 July 2013 (Copyright Carol Jones)

In front of this dark and brooding scene, there seemed to be a sea of green that lapped against the dark wall of the mountains, seeming to swell and writhe in the breeze that blew. This feeling of movement was accentuated by the waving heads of the browning grass inflorescences that moved like large shoals of tiny fish, dashing first one way and then the next. Over this there moved the dark scudding shadows, produced by fluffy white cumulus clouds that were moving rapidly across the scene, like the hunting of large predatory fish lining up their dinner. On this swelling sea of green, a developing woodland seems to float free, with each element moving as an individual, at the will of the current and the wind, like paper boats being tossed head long down a mountain stream.

Closer to, the rich browns of this sea are made up by a multitude of grass heads from the rich metallic heads of Wavy Hair-grass that rippled with every breath of air, mixed with the loosely cigar shaped heads of Yorkshire Fog, which as the seeds were ripening had taken on a delicate brown hue. Out from amongst these various shades of brown there appeared amazing bright purple carpets, formed from the flowering shoots of young Bell Heather, regenerating amongst the grasses.

Carpets of Bell Heather – 18 July 2013 (Copyright Ross Lockley)

All this I thought I was observing harmlessly from a mountain road, within a felled forestry plantation that was beginning to regenerate into new woodland, and into which I wandered to look at various odds and sods. That was until we moved further along and came across a notice that announced for the area we were just leaving, “Keep to the road – Danger – Explosives”. Oh! You don’t see that every day!!