by Stephen Moss
The fresh, clear weather has brought other migrants out too. In the sky above Coombes Cider Mill a small, compact, solitary bird is heading resolutely south. Pale below, it briefly turns to reveal brownish upperparts: a sand martin. Like the wheatear, sand martins do not breed in the parish, but do regularly fly through in spring and autumn. Unlike the wheatear, sand martins travel by day, enabling them to feed on flying insects en route.
Occasionally, on clear, bright days in September, one or two much larger day-flying migrants may pass through the skies above the parish. Although most of our birds of prey are resident, a few do migrate, among them the osprey and the marsh harrier. Both have enjoyed considerable rises in their fortunes over the past few decades, so are seen more often on their travels than they once were. Even so, encountering them is still a memorable experience.
I have seen each of these large raptors just once here, as they headed south. The osprey was flying high over my home, attracting the attention of the local ravens, which mobbed it unmercifully as it struggled through on long, flappy wings. The marsh harrier – a female, whose creamy cap contrasted with her chocolate-brown plumage – was far more determined. She flew low over the ground, head down like a racing cyclist, powering through the air on long, strong wings. In less than a minute she was gone.
ON A CHILLY autumn evening, I head a few miles north of the parish, to the base of Cheddar Gorge. I wait by the River Yeo, which runs through the centre of this famous tourist town. I am looking for a scarce wild creature, and one that has declined more rapidly during my lifetime than any other British mammal: the water vole.
The river here has been dammed, the weir creating a narrow, fast-flowing stream, complete with mossy rocks and clumps of watercress; a Thatcher’s cider bottle floats incongruously near the water’s edge. The stream is crossed by a small stone bridge, with a steady flow of passers-by, but there is no sign of my rodent quarry. I am told they are very tame: and with so many people walking past, they must be.
Two grey wagtails are feeding along the river, perching on the rocks and flitting acrobatically up into the air to catch tiny midges. As I wait a sparrowhawk passes overhead, its unmistakable flapping and gliding flight causing a momentary panic among the local songbirds. The sparrowhawk aside, this is a good place to spend the winter, being a degree or two warmer than the surrounding countryside. The river’s flow prevents ice-ups in all but the harshest winters, and provides a constant source of tiny insects all season long.
I become mesmerised by the movement of the river, as the slow, inky-black water picks up speed over the rocks, its constant movement creating the illusion of stasis. The wagtails flit from one rock to another, constantly moving their tails to keep balance, but there is still no sign of any water voles. Eventually, as dusk begins to fall, I give up my vigil and return home.
As the autumn equinox passes, and we begin the long, slow slide towards winter, my quest to see the water voles of Cheddar seems doomed to failure. Then I get a tip-off. My wife Suzanne has begun work at the local medical centre, and one day she notices a movement in the river alongside the car park. It may be a rat, it may even be a fish; but I decide it’s worth another visit.
So one afternoon I return to Cheddar and walk carefully along the river, peering through the foliage of the bankside trees while trying to stop my children falling in. As soon as I get within sight of the bright, clear water I catch sight of a rapid movement beneath the surface. Unfortunately it is not a rodent, but a fast-moving fish.
Just as I am about to leave, though, a real surprise; a thrush-sized bird hops up on the rocks by the weir: a dipper. For a brief moment I get the classic view of this wonderful waterbird as it bobs up and down on springy legs, before zipping off into the distance like a giant wren.
Dippers are generally found on upland rivers and streams, where fast-flowing water provides enough oxygen for the aquatic insects on which they feed. They catch these by submerging themselves beneath the surface of the water, then walking along the riverbed like an avian submarine. It may seem incongruous to find dippers in this urban setting, but I shouldn’t be surprised: the River Yeo, flowing straight down off the Mendips, provides the perfect habitat for this, our only aquatic songbird. And in my excitement in seeing the dipper, I momentarily forget that my original quest, to see the water voles, remains unfulfilled.
THE NIGHTS ARE lengthening, the days are getting cooler, and the butterflies in our garden are having their final fling. With fallen fruits littering the lawn, a troupe of red admirals has arrived to make the most of this bumper harvest. One sunny morning, as I am hanging out the washing, at least half a dozen of these gaudy insects appear. Just hatched, and box-fresh in appearance, they are feasting on a glut of apples, pears and plums.
Drinking this half-rotten fruit has a strange side effect: the butterflies become intoxicated by the products of fermentation. This means I can get so close to them that I need to take out my reading glasses to focus. Only then can I truly appreciate their stunning colours, a delicate and perfectly symmetrical pattern of black and orange-red, set off by the snow-white patches towards the tips of their wings.
Can there be a more beautiful British butterfly? I’m hard pushed to think of one, and wonder if this were a rarity, like the swallowtail or one of the fritillaries, people might rate it more highly than they do. As it is, we usually notice the first one of the year, and the rest of the time we ignore them, instead of stopping to admire their gorgeous patterns and colours.
Like those invading painted ladies, red admirals are migrants, coming to our shores from continental Europe each spring. Once here they gradually spread north throughout Britain, some reaching as far as Shetland. After laying their eggs on the upper surface of stinging nettles, they then die, so the ones I am seeing in my garden at this time of year are the newly hatched offspring of those long-distance travellers.
In a month or so, as the cold weather really takes hold, these splendid butterflies will head off to find the last flowers of the year, ivy blossom. They will eke out a last few precious drops of nectar while basking in the rays of the weak late-autumn sunshine. Most will then die, but in the past few years some red admirals have begun to overwinter in southern England, hibernating in garden sheds before emerging on sunny days in the New Year. I remind myself to remember to look for these sleeping beauties, come November.
AS THE MONTH draws to a close, a bright, sunny day marks summer’s final fling. Common darter dragonflies mate frantically on the warm concrete paths in our garden, each male grabbing the female in a tight embrace before curling his abdomen around to meet hers, in a brief but passionate act of congress. A flush of tall daisies, their white petals tinged purple in the morning sun, attract honeybees, each desperately loading up on nectar before returning to their distant hives. And overhead, against the cloud-flecked sky, the occasional swallow continues to head south, on its intrepid journey to Africa.
OCTOBER
AMILD AND BLUSTERY day at the beginning of the month, as a hundred or so villagers gather in the parish church for the annual Harvest Festival. Predictably, but comfortingly, the service opens with that rousing Victorian hymn, ‘We Plough the Fields and Scatter’. Swelled by the voices of the village schoolchildren, and coinciding with the first weak rays of sun shining in through the east window, the chorus is suitably uplifting. The words of the hymn seem curiously apt, for this year the weather has gone back to something approaching normal; with snow in winter, summer warmth and sunshine to swell the grain, autumn breezes and, today at least, soft refreshing rain.
After the service is over, and the rain has stopped, we take a family walk down the lane behind our home in search of our own share of seasonal fruitfulness: blackberries. In the traditional calendar of natural events, we are only just in time. Old Michaelmas Day on 11 October is, according to folklore, the time the devil spits on blackberries, making them inedible. A tasting of the current crop confirms that the blackberries may be small, but they
are still sweet and tasty.
When I was a child, blackberry-picking was an annual event. From midsummer to early autumn we would take every chance we could to grab handfuls of the dark, squishy fruit; usually eating far more than we ever took home. Nowadays, I suspect the fear of consuming anything that hasn’t been processed, packaged and purchased stops many people from taking advantage of this abundant food supply. Down the road at the Highbridge branch of Asda, blackberries are on special offer, marked down to £1.99 a punnet. Yet in the lanes around the parish you can collect a basketful for free in a few minutes, though hardly anyone does. The vast majority of the local blackberries go unpicked and uneaten, left instead for the birds.
But picking blackberries is more than simply an enjoyable diversion on a country walk. In an age when we have lost the connection between what we eat and the land where our food comes from, this autumnal activity offers a tangible link to our foraging past. Not all that long ago – certainly in our grandparents’ time – this hedgerow bounty was a welcome addition to a poor and often monotonous diet. It was also a major crop here on the levels, with the fruit used for dyes and to make jam; the income this generated bought the village children boots and shoes for the winter.
Picking blackberries is also hard enough work to make you feel you have earned the right to eat your harvest. Those annoying prickles, which help protect the fruit from being taken, require a degree of care if you want to avoid being scratched. We return home with hands stained mauve by blackberry juice, along with a few red marks as a sign of the sacrifice we made to pick them. That evening, we enjoy a pie made from home-grown cooking apples and the fruits of our blackberrying labours; a fitting end to the day when we stood in church to give thanks for the food we eat.
AS WE ENTER the last quarter of the year, so the creatures of the parish begin to enter our home. House invasions are a perennial feature of life in the country, especially in an old farmhouse like ours, here since the middle of the eighteenth century. In spring and early summer we play host to baby birds; mainly fledgling sparrows or robins which have tumbled out of their nest, and wandered through our permanently open back door. They are occasionally joined by a jackdaw in the chimney: either an adult building a nest, or a clumsy juvenile which has lost its footing.
Toads are another annual visitor, especially when we get a spell of rainy weather, which encourages them to venture away from the safety of their hiding places. The lack of a doorstep enables them to crawl doggedly inside, where they sit on the wooden floor looking rather lost, before we pick them up and release them into a damp corner of our garden.
Moths, of course, are a regular sight on summer mornings, as we usually leave the bathroom light on in case the children get up during the night. Large yellow underwings are the most frequent visitors, blundering around in the shower or lurking behind the net curtains before fluttering out to scare the unwary. But smaller moths venture indoors too, including on one occasion a species I hadn’t seen before, a snout: a triangular-shaped moth with hooked wingtips, and the peculiar proboscis that gives this insect its name.
But these are just the forerunners of the true invasion, which takes place now in early autumn. Craneflies – daddy-long-legs to every new generation of children – dance around on their six springy legs as they seek to escape from the human inhabitants of our home. They superficially resemble spiders, and indeed one of the autumn spiders we see most often is, rather confusingly, named the ‘daddy-long-legs spider’. This spindly creature hides away in the cooler parts of the house, so that from October onwards our younger children are wary of entering the downstairs toilet. When I see this spider tucked inside its rather pathetic web in the angle between wall and ceiling, it’s hard to resist poking it gently with the end of a pencil. In response, it bounces back and forth too rapidly for my eye to see anything but a blur; a useful defence mechanism to foil predators.
Daddy-long-legs spiders may look weedy and insignificant, but they have given rise to a popular urban myth. It is said that this harmless-looking creature contains a venom so potent that, were its jaws powerful enough to pierce human skin, it would kill you instantly. Helped by the Internet, this ‘fact’ is now well and truly embedded in the public consciousness, and the rather dull truth is unable to compete. The venom of the daddy-long-legs spider is actually rather weaker than that of most other spiders, and can do us no harm.
Two larger spiders – the huge and hairy (and to many people terrifying) Tegenaria domestica and Tegenaria gigantea – also emerge at this time of year, scuttling across sitting-room carpets to hysterical screams up and down the land. The ones we see are usually males, on the lookout for a mate; if you think these look big, you should see the females. Fortunately, after a few weeks these lovelorn arachnids have found each other and settled down out of sight, to breed.
Outside, in the parks and playgrounds around the parish, it’s the local children’s favourite time of year. The leaves of the horse-chestnut trees are turning an orangey-brown, and beneath every one is a treasure trove of spiky green balls, each beginning to split open to reveal the dark, shiny fruit within. Is there any natural object as instantly alluring as the conker? Nothing else has quite the same appeal, and even now, more than forty years after I picked one up as a small child, I still get the same thrill each year when I find the first polished conker of the season.
In the playground by Blackford Church, where back in chilly February I saw the first catkins of spring, there are dozens of conkers. I have a vision of the local children collecting them as I once did; taking them home by the pocketful, and patiently drilling a neat hole through each one before threading it onto a piece of string in readiness for combat. For this, of course, has always been the enduring appeal of conkers, especially for generations of small boys. The fact that this bountiful fruit doesn’t just look good but can be used in the famous playground game, simply adds to its appeal.
The current obsession with health and safety has led to the game of conkers being banned in some schools; but I thought the practice might still survive here, in these rural surroundings. Judging by the number of unclaimed beauties lying here beneath the swings and the see-saw, perhaps it doesn’t.
IN MOST AUTUMNS we enjoy a classic ‘Indian summer’. Temperatures still plummet by night, and mornings dawn cool, with clear blue skies. But as the day progresses, in sheltered parts of the parish at least, a southerly breeze and the soft warmth of the sun belie the lateness of the season. Some days, the only reason we know it’s not May or June is the absence of swallows twittering in the skies above.
Their place is taken by starlings, whose high-pitched whistles have a less melodic, more metallic quality than the swallows – almost a mechanical timbre at times. As the air warms up in the early afternoon, little flocks of starlings fly up above the village gardens, spreading out from their usual tight formation, and grazing on insects floating in the air. They display an unusual grace – not a word we usually associate with these chunky little birds – as they stretch out their bills to grab their invisible prey.
I mow the lawn for what I hope will be the last time this autumn; though in some years another cut is required in November, or even December. Instead of the grass moths of spring and summer, long-legged craneflies leap from beneath the mower’s blades, bouncing away in search of an uncut patch of sward where they can hide from predators.
Despite the warmth, signs of autumn are more and more visible; not least in the absence of those pink and purple flowers that lined the rhynes and hedgerows during the past few months. Purple loosestrife, which only a few weeks ago was still flowering in any damp corner, has gone to seed, while only a few sad, drooping fronds of willow-herb remain. Clouds of midges still hang in the air in more sheltered areas; but within a week or so I shall hear the high-pitched call of returning redwings in the night sky; and soon afterwards feel the crunch of early-morning frosts beneath my boots.
ON A COOL, bright morning, towards the end of this Ind
ian summer, weather patterns are beginning to shift into autumn. But the sun is still shining along Kingsway as I return home after taking my children to school. Driving is never the best way to notice wildlife, as the windscreen and engine noise cut us off from the subtle signs that alert us to the presence of something unusual: birdsong, the buzz of an insect, or the distant flick of a wing.
But I can hardly fail to notice the flock of birds flying low over the rhyne beside the road. Just as when you catch sight of an old friend, when you least expect to see them, my brain does a double take. Not starlings, as I first thought, but swallows: more than sixty of them, feeding frantically on the few tiny insects that still remain airborne. In the bright morning light they swerve expertly from side to side, using their tails as brakes, and keeping to the area directly above the water, where the flies, gnats and midges are most concentrated.
It is almost a month since the village swallows left their perch on the telegraph wires for the last time, and headed away into the blue. I have long since grown used to their absence; yet now, in the middle of October, here they are again. Not the same birds, of course: our swallows are way to the south by now, flying over the Mediterranean or crossing the Sahara.
Given the run of north-easterly winds, I suspect this little group of swallows, with a solitary house martin in tow, have come from Scandinavia. Having flown across the North Sea they are now making their way through Britain, finding food wherever they can, before heading out over the English Channel on the next leg of their journey. After feeding they rest for a while on the telegraph wires, reminding me, as they always do, of musical notes on a set of staves. As they perch they hold out their wings, expertly preening their feathers with their stubby bills to keep them in tip-top condition, and to remove parasites (though some mites and ticks are so persistent they accompany the birds all the way to Africa and back). From time to time each bird will swoop down off the wire to feed, before returning to its original perch.
