A deep frost on a still and overcast morning.  The ground hard,  ice on poached ground.  Pastures of frosted grass, lichens on limestone, paler than ever, and cushions of moss all needles of ice.
The soft chacking call of fieldfare in the top of a hawthorn.  A sole bird visible but he calls to companions hidden amongst a tangle of branches. Only flight reveals them. 
Later, a group of half a dozen fieldfare flew calling, toward Helsington Barrows.

Berries and fallen leaves lie on the sodden grass beneath the whitebeam. Standing  beneath the tree, I look up through branches sunlit and shadowed, through red berries to the blue beyond.  Listening to a blustery wind that animates the tree, setting it dancing.  The fiercest gusts make the boughs creak as as the tree flexes and sways. Whitebeam is a beautiful  tree and responsive to the wind. It rises behind a dry stone wall that flutes the wind through its crevices, standing sturdy and unmoved.

Berries are abundant this autumn and I know few as striking as the fruit of the spindle tree.  In early November, I'm seeking the perfect spindle laden with fruit and with leaves all shades of rose.  It's rare to find perfection.  Sometimes autumn winds wreak havoc with the leaves, stripping the shrub.  This autumn, I found a shrub by the lake at Sizergh with splendid foliage and few fruit.
Near Helsingon Church was a spindle rich in fruit, caught in sunlight,  with few greenish leaves.
The pink seed capsules split to reveal orange seeds and here you can see the capsule splitting to release its seeds. 

The gardens at Sizergh Castles are a joy. On our last visit the motif was butterflies, today it's autumn fruit and winter thrush.
Leaves fall from the trees but the early sun vanishes and the light is poor. Flights of redwing overhead, the small and slender thrush with a high-pitched contact call- this morning they are silent.  Fieldfare amongst them but they are silent too. The birds alight high in the canopy and it's hard to make out detail.  Fieldfare and redwing are shy birds and the last leaves  conceal their numbers.  
Bunches of purple grapes on the vine against the lichened brick wall.   Dahlias and a drift of Spanish daisies. 
We come upon a bed of Chinese lanterns and a single fruit within the remnant of its outer casing. 

Just look at the colourful plumage of this bearded tit.  The bright orange bill, the dove grey head and those long black moustachios down over his white breast.  His mantle is a warm russet-orange and his wings are streaked with white and black.  A strikingly handsome bird well-lit on a day of cloudless blue sky.
In spring, he feeds on insects.  In autumn and winter his diet is reed seeds and grit in this feeding tray is an aid to digestion.  The RSPB  entice the birds out of the reeds for us to admire. 

Stepping out of the car at Otter Bank, I heard fieldfare.  For me, the first of the season and always a thrill.  
We headed for Whinfell Tarn and Black Moss Tarn and we heard and saw mixed flocks of starling and fieldfare along the route.  Abundant hawthorn berries were the attraction.  A flock of starling is a noisy, chattering affair and you had to be alert to catch the call of fieldfare amongst them.  The morning grew brighter so sunlight caught the more colourful fieldfare as they flew.

Below the cliff, the hanging wood is a secret place.  Exposed to the south-westerlies, trees lose their leaves quickly. Birch are almost bare,  The last whitebeam leaves linger among  clusters of rich red berries. With dark red hawthorn berries on shrubs rooted in scree.
On a calm October morning the sun illuminates the limestone cliff where it rises sheer from a scree buttress, a focal point.   Trees are outlined against the distant fells. Curves and kinks of the cliff-edge give shifting perspectives along your way.

An inspirational day, at last.  A pacy drama of sunlight and louring cloud, a bombast of cloud that threatened - and held. back.
​Until we reached Kendal Race Course where the clouds unleashed their load. Water streamed down  Brigsteer Road and we reached home, soaked again. Who cares? The morning was magnificent and I have a cache of images to contemplate.  The high drama of cloudscape. 

The River Kent is a short, fast-flowing river which rises and falls fast.  Last night the rain lashed down and trees thrashed about in the wind. Mild enough, but relentless rain.  A gurgling dawn of louring cloud. This morning we will return to the river to see how things are.
The weir below Stramongate Bridge is dramatic, a cascade of amber water with a loud churning of rocks below the fall.  When the river is in spate the shoals of rock and gravels are submerged and the waterbirds seek the shelter of bankside reeds upstream, and of eddies.

Unsettled is the keynote of the weather, through summer and autumn. A weather-motif which mirrors our unsettled politics.  Political turbulence is a distraction from the all important question of the impact of Climate Change and species loss.
So,  carpe diem, seize the day.  Seize the sunrise, a moment of glory. The town below lies in darkness but wildlife is wakeful.  Jackdaws take wing at first light.

​Ratings for BBC Parliament are up, soaring viewing figures.    Parliament Live,  matters of moment.  Here and now, of our times. Momentous.  
The Supreme Court gives its judgement that prorogation was unlawful and John Bercow,  Speaker of the House, declares business will resume next day at 11. 30 am on Wednesday 25th September.  Parliament will resume, prorogation ‘never happened.’
So what is the significance of an intricate spider's web picked-out in water droplets?  

Redacted, then resurrected by popular demand.  Why?
Ratings for BBC Parliament are up, soaring viewing figures. There are hot dates for binge viewing.  Parliament Live,  matters of moment.  Here and now, of our times. Momentous. See the traditions of our democracy, how it works. See it evolving before your eyes.
The Supreme Court gives its judgement that prorogation was unlawful and John Bercow, Speaker of the House, declares business will resume at 11.30 am on Wednesday 25th September. Parliament will resume, proragation ‘never happened.’

A mellow morning at SIzergh Castle gardens where dragonflies mate in the bright and sultry air. Water lilies spiked with mares' tails and across the lake berries of hawthorn and guelder rose shot through with sunlight.  Cordons of apples bordering a profusion of flowers.   Red admirals nectaring on  everlasting flowers with waxy petals and sedum alive with small tortoiseshell, painted ladies, bees,wasps and hoverflies.   Here nature thrives.

Gooseholme Bridge is gone. The base of three piers shows where it stood.   After consultation with the public a new bridge will be constructed.  Flood risk to residents is an important consideration in its design.
Further upstream, work continues on Victoria Bridge.   The steel piles which protected workmen from the flow of the river are being taken up.   Work isn't complete but must cease at the end of September.  

Welcome a mellow September day with sunlight to illuminate a limestone landscape.  To the Cheese Press  Stone, then on to Gragareth.   Sunlight and shadow on outcrops of limestone.  To Jingling Pot with rowan berries.  
​To the south- east, changing perspectives on Ingleborough. 

Morning and the Tour of Britain stage 4 finale Gateshead to Beast Banks Kendal is scheduled for mid-afternoon. Preparations are well underway and the logistics of making ready for such a major sporting event are impressive.  The police have searched the area. Bins all sealed.  A personal highlight  is meeting the Cumbrian Police Dog Unit, talking with one of the team and watching thirteen week old Ripley, a Belgian Malinois, with her police handler.   Ripley will be  what the unit calls a big dog,  a general purpose police dog, 

Wet and windy is daily fare through summer and into autumn.  The weather forecast told of rain. The clag was down, the horizon of fells blotted out. Ground saturated over recent weeks, an excursion to Silver How was off.  I ponder my last visit there in February. And cosily at home, we consider clag  and the water cycle.  Who talks of  clag and what does it signify?   

​House martins on the wing above  the bell tower of All Saints Church, Culgaith,  beside the River Eden. Views of Cross Fell. ' Eden for sale', reads a billboard.  If only the search for the lost garden were so simple.  Norse place-names tell of Viking invasions. Successive waves of settlers who bequeath to us their farming traditions, their DNA, their language and their poetry. A civilisation  on the cusp of Christianity and the tug of it is written into the map . 

Contrast the awesome beauty of  cloudscapes over Scout Scar this morning with an  August of unsettled weather, of sudden heavy downpours. 
Consider the skies over the burning Amazonian forest. Over the burning boreal forests of Siberia, the taiga.
Remember  Okjokull,  an Icelandic glacier lost ten years ago to rising temperatures.
'This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you will know if we did it.'  So reads the commemorative plaque.

​A mile to Kendal, says the milestone. From over the wall came a chuntering.  A dog appeared, helped over  the stile  by his owner who followed in a flow of expletives. Well, the same one really. Something about the wife of the Norse God Odin, Frigg by name. ' I was going to make an f---ing pond today but the concrete wouldn’t set.'  He lambasted  the rain and louring clouds.  Enough of a summer of extremes- extreme heat followed by a long period of unsettled weather- downpours.  We've had enough.